It is corporate night at the opera for the opening of Katya Kabanova and all the big business hitters turn out. Just in case you think the chat is all about stocks and shares, profits and losses, the tiger tycoons are letting their hair down, having donned tuxedos, furs and sequins to get stuck into a pre-show champagne at the Merrion Hotel.
Paddy Gallagher of Guinness Ireland, Roy Douglas of Irish Permanent and Pat O'Donoghue of Irish Life are among the corporate guests.
"This is the mechanism by which we say thanks," says David Collopy of Opera Ireland, which receives one-third of its funding from businesses. Also grateful for the corporate sponsorship is Dieter Kaegi, artistic director of Opera Ireland. Although the Swissman has worked and lived all over the world, he has now made Ireland his home and recently bought a house on North Great Georges Street. He admits Ireland can be a difficult place to work for an artistic director of opera, since many people only know
the most popular works - a bit of La Boheme, a touch of Madama Butterfly - but things are changing, he says, and the audiences are getting younger and more adventurous.
And a minor adventure it is when the shuttle bus to take the guests from the Merrion Hotel to the Gaiety fails to turn up. Baggot Street becomes a tide of black and white with clomping sounds from wretched high-heels which just aren't made for concrete.
At the interval many look visibly pale after at the graphic sexual innuendo of Katya Kabanova. Circulating here are actor Alan Stanford, Jack Gilligan of Dublin Corporation and the Dublin Theatre Festival's former director, Tony O Dalaigh. Kaegi is in attendance in case some traditional opera lovers take particular exception.
Frank Keane of BMW, "genuinely liked it", but admits to dozing off in the first half. The Czech ambassador, Petr Kolar, and his wife, Jaroslava, seem pleased with the presentation, which was sung in their native Czech. Does he miss the vibrant operatic life of Prague? Not at all, he says, "Irish people are artists of the mind".