It has been billed as "Ireland's Glyndebourne", but Loughcrew Garden Opera's easy-going atmosphere gives it the feel of a teddy-bears' picnic for grown-ups.
A procession of devotees in full opera-going regalia came to Loughcrew House and Garden in Oldcastle, Co Meath, at the weekend bearing early-evening offerings of salmon, sushi, champagne and just about anything that could be char-grilled.
Men in black hammered parasols into the immaculately manicured lawns. Chairs and tables were arranged under centuries-old yew trees, rugs spread on the grass. And when the unmistakable sound of a coloratura soprano lashing into her warm-up routine burst like a thunderclap over the scene, nobody even blinked.
The opera part of the weekend was serious. None of your corporate popera highlights, but a full-on staging of Mozart's wicked send-up of sexual stereotyping, Cosi Fan Tutte. Set in an Indian garrison in the 1920s mainly, as director Nicholas Heath explained, beaming from beneath an elaborate gold turban, "to give everyone, including the audience, an excuse to dress up".
Dress up they duly did. Perfectly normal-looking individuals disappeared into the washrooms of the Loughcrew Coffee Shop and emerged swathed in startling shades of turquoise, yellow, red and purple.
"I bought this in Nepal in 1986," said Dubliner Lesley Osborne of her red embroidered sari, "and as you can imagine, it hasn't had many outings since." Nick Gent had been presented with his gilt jacket and white hat while studying yoga in India.
Juliet Duff, a native of Vancouver, wasn't taking any chances with the Irish weather. "I have about five layers of stuff under here," she confessed, peeling back an array of coloured cottons and silks. "Of course, I used to be a belly dancer. . ."
As the evening drew in, the gathering crescendo of chatter and glass-clinking must have been music to the ears of the owners of Loughcrew House, Charles and Emily Naper.
The former's red turban had never budged throughout a day of putting up posters, driving tractors and posing amiably for pictures; the latter, who painted this year's set designs with the help of a group of artist friends, insisted: "Four years ago, we barely knew what an opera was."
If the peals of laughter and bursts of applause emerging from inside the performance tent were anything to go by, they certainly know now.
