Sundays are usually reserved for getting off the going-out carousel, but not for the folk who dug out their tuxedos and shiny frocks for the opening night of Salome. This was the first-ever performance here of Richard Strauss's opera, which premiered in Dresden in 1905, and was brought here by Opera Ireland.
Among the guests who gathered in the Merrion Hotel beforehand to drink champagne by candlelight were Margaret McDonnell, a vice-president of Opera Ireland, who was one of the few women present to eschew black for a vivid pink frock. She was talking to artistic patron, Veronica Dunne, and Dermot O'Kelly, an ex-chairman of the committee. "We're very lucky with opera here, we get it for half nothing, not like Covent Garden," Margaret said briskly.
David Collopy, general manager of Opera Ireland, was greeting guests at the door. "The attendance for opera in Ireland has doubled in the last few years," he commented happily. Also at the Merrion were Dieter Kaegi, artistic director of Opera Ireland; Mark Byrne, director of Brown Thomas; Neil Murphy, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers; Henri de Coignac, the French Ambassador; Adrian Burke, director with AIB, and his wife Bar- bara Burke; and Peter MacCann, general manager at the Merrion Hotel.
Phelim Donlon, drama and opera officer with the Arts Council, said his colleagues at Merrion Square were "hoping to get the new Arts Plan to the Minister before the end of April".
The current chairwoman of Opera Ireland, Ellen O'Meara Walsh, was unperturbed by reports of a good dress rehearsal: "Good dress rehearsal, bad first performance - that's in theatre, not opera," she declared, before everyone got on buses to the Gaiety. Unsung heroes of the evening were definitely the perished-looking doormen from the Merrion, who cheerfully escorted guests in icy rain to the waiting buses under the shelter of big umbrellas.
