The champagne flowed as guests at an open-air performance of La Bohème in the Merrion Hotel strolled in to take their seats. The hotel's parterre, complete with elegant water feature and ducks in residence, was the perfect setting.
As the evening sun dipped below the roof-tops, Mimi, played by Michelle Sheridan, an award-winning young singer from Longford town, coughed her last and expired. Rodolfo, played by Robert Milner, sank on to her breast and cried as if his heart was breaking. It was great.
Some held back tears as the opening black-tie performance of the great Puccini opera from Co-Opera, the Limerick-based touring company set up by Opera Ireland, drew to a close.
Tonight, the company goes to the Watergate Theatre in Kilkenny, before beginning a countrywide tour, including a stop tomorrow week at the Éigse Carlow Arts Festival, where the troupe will perform the opera in English at the Mount Wolseley Country Club in Tullow.
At the Dublin performance, Peter MacCann, general manager of the Merrion Hotel, made sure everyone was happy - blankets for those who began to feel the chill, cheese sticks to keep everyone going before the sumptuous supper was served later on, and champagne to keep our hearts up (as Mimi was about to die).
Gen John de Chastelain, chairman of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, took in the atmosphere with his wife, Mary Ann.
Nathalie Desbiens from Ottowa, a financial analyst, was linking up with her fiancé, Mark Kenny, of the Jefferson Smurfit Group. The couple are getting married in August in Quebec city, at the plush Chateau Frontenac. She chatted to barrister Oisín Quinn, son of Lochlann and Brenda Quinn, who were also at the opera, and Oisín's wife, Elva Mulchrone Quinn.
Elegant opera-lovers Ann Weafer, from Walkinstown, and Ann Gaughan, from Coolock, also enjoyed the première. "We'd stand in the rain just to hear the music," said Weafer. And there was no rain. Only Mimi died, and it was too sad to bear.