IT isn't quite "Del Boy Goes To The Opera". In fact, the annual Paul Hamlyn Westminster Week at the Royal Opera House gathers in an audience so varied that the memory of the Only Fools And Horses episode which saw television's favourite Cockney munching crisps at Covent Garden pales into insignificance by comparison,
For the past seven days, some 135,000 first time opera goers have been enjoying the best of British opera at kaock down prices. This year's guests have included the Second Ruislip Brownie pack, the Jewish Aids Trust, the Serbian Society, the Bahais of Newham, the Loton Mozart Lovers and a group described in the 1997 Paul Hamlyn Week directory as "Macra an Feirme (Irish Young farmers), Cork, Fire".
For the Royal Opera House, it's an audience building exercise. Fqr the 40 members of Macra who travelled to see Jonathan Miller's ultra sophisticated production of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte on Thursday night, it was an eye opener.
"I'm optimistic" declared Tom Sherlock, who works as a hoof care specialist with the Farm Relief Service in Cork, just before he entered the awesomely stepped amphitheatre. "I like anything with a beat, and songs with a good story."
Some 3 1/2 hours of Da Ponte comedy later, he wasn't available for comment but comments were coming thick and fast from the rest of the Macra contingent, the first Irish group to have been invited to take part in the 10 year project.
"I thought, it would be fat people in frocks...
"Brilliant ... loved it."
"Never again."
Cosi, it must be said, is not Mozart's most approachable opera, and while there were plenty of user friendly touches in this production, not to mention English surtitles, a uniformly mellifluous cast of young and personable singers and mouth watering costumes by Giorgio Armani, the absence of premierleague passion and, say, a dancing girl or two was lamented by some.
Not Mozart's finest hour, reckoned David and Stephanie Connor, from Clara, Co Offaly. Having seen The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute, they were well placed to judge. They had won places on the trip to Covent Garden courtesy of a competition on the Pat Kenny radio show for which David composed the libretto for an opera set on an Irish farm.
"The Marriage of Mickero, it was called," said David, "and it was about a man who was overly slow with his marriage proposals and a girl who was lively and, well, lusty was the word we used." A moving tale which, in the best operatic tradition, ended with tears, a row and a drowning in the slurry pit.
