MY NIGHT AT THE OPERA

I first heard about Connect at the Met from the kind of person who believes in the power of music and marriage to heal the world--well, it's an approach. For $110, you net a pre-performance reception, an orchestra seat, and champagne and dessert during intermission, along with the opportunity to schmooze with fellow opera-loving singles. At the time I thought of it as a kind of scam, just the sort of cynical marketing ploy the Gelb regime might cook up. So I ignored the notion until it occurred to me that it might be fun to attend a performance--as a journalist, mind you--and to report on the social satire.

The Met website is a handsome thing, with lots of white space that suggests the expanse of culture and one's limitless place in it. But when I tried to sign up for one of several evenings--Under Forty, Over Forty, Gay and Lesbian--I was sent off into some cyber-corner. A call to the press office, and I learned that the performance of "Iphegenie en Tauride" was sold out--at least as far as women were concerned--and that my French pronunciation was nowhere near acceptable. I persevered and reached the woman in charge of the programme, who explained to me that "If we don't have a fair distribution of men and women, we consider the evening a failure."

Just what constituted a fair distribution? Well, more than 25% more women than men. I had to argue my way into buying a ticket ("We don't offer press passes to...blogs," I was told), but at that point, my curiosity had kicked in. Of course, the marketing strategy was working: no room at the inn? I wanted in that much more. Put on hold for several days, I eventually got clearance to purchase a ticket, and I was triumphant--having sold the notion of the story to my More Intelligent Life editors, I'd now be coming through.

Dress code? "Well, people do come dressed up, but mostly people arrive from work." I took this as a cool warning not to get myself all tarted up in a way that might embarrass the Met. Photography? I was informed that a sign would be posted, and that I should certainly not feel welcome to take snapshots of the attendees without getting their permission. More and more exciting, I decided.

Now usually I attend the opera with my friend Peter. That's like looking at paintings with Clement Greenberg, someone so knowledgeable and immersed in the realm that one has to run to keep up with the apercus and the expertise. It's an education, and certainly no place to tote along the baggage of loneliness. But now I was travelling.

Dressed in black to point up my melancholy and seriousness of intent, I arrived early as instructed at the sign-up table, where an aging Silenus in a leather cowboy hat proffered his ticket and party pass. Definitely a bad sign. I was sent to the box office, usually a well-oiled machine but that night the locus of a 15-minute wait while a curious couple held up the works at one of the windows. The same couple, a Euro-Auntie Mame and her dissipated nephew, showed up on the Grand Tier, where glasses of not-quite poisonous wine were offered, along with tiny sandwiches of smoked salmon or chicken on white bread--fancy nursery fare, most fetchingly displayed. I managed to eat about 30 before curtain.

Sauntering around, my name-tag affixed onto my handbag, I greeted people with a matey nod, only to find that the law of the jungle at such events has women studiously ignoring each other's presence. And there were many more women than men: those guys who had shown up were surrounded by three or four ladies, and none of my sisters seemed heartened by my cheer. One woman standing in an alcove wore a pretty silk scarf in lieu of a shoulder sling, and the gesture seemed so gallant to me that I went over to compliment the pattern and to congratulate her sense of style. Otherwise, eye contact was discouraged--women who had arrived together glared at the presumption, while those who were travelling solo seemed even more bruised by the condescension.

Oh, this wasn't going well at all--what about feminist solidarity? We weren't at the Prada sample sale, after all--this was the Met, high temple of culture and passion, and we sisters weren't going to be petty about anything at such a venue, were we? Maybe it was time for another little sandwich. "That salmon was last seen swimming upstream," a jocular fellow twinkled. And just to seem in on the fun, I told him that I'd come clear across the room to hear him deliver that line. Certainly another glass of merlot, served by the impeccable Met staff. It was like a terrible bar mitzvah at which you wanted only to elope with one of the waiters.

Leaning against the bar, I scribbled some notes and looked up to see a woman, hopelessly or defiantly unchic, gazing over the crowd. Engagingly sweet, she admitted "I'm trying to meet someone." When we'd made our way to the disappointing seats (up too close, underneath the loge) we saw that we would be sitting next to each other, alongside three other ladies. So much for distribution. Sitting forward to take in Susan Graham's overacting in the foreshortened set that had been shipped over from Seattle, she looked intent: "Is that Placido Domingo?" she whispered. "He looks taller on TV." At the end of Act II, she turned to say, with a luminous enthusiasm, "I don't care for it."

Intermission promised champagne and cut-up brownies, but I was already depressed by the demographics and took the steps two at a time to breathe the more egalitarian air of the upper tier, to buy a cup of the Met's toxic coffee, and to run into half a dozen people I knew and suddenly longed to be with. Ah, my people, I thought, and was reminded of how hard the singles' business is.

I ran downstairs just in time to get herded back to my seat, where a most presentable guy had materialised next to my neighbour, who visibly brightened.

"Are we switching seats?" she asked hopefully.

"Well, I switched with my wife."

Distribution had a good deal to answer for. While I can't blame the Met entirely for the fact that there are so many single women in New York City, I was furious at the callous marketing of the evening. Seat five women in a row and charge them each $110, but promise them the chance to meet a man? Welcome to the world, anyone might say, but it was a new world for me.

Connecting at the Met, of course, I was in the thick of singles sadness--how had I managed to avoid the desultory wandering around a room, glass in hand, tongue hooked around front teeth to scrub off the inevitable lipstick smear, in order to find a mate?

In the 1990s, a friend had plunged into the uncharted waters of dating by signing up with an outfit called the Classical Music Lovers' Society, a pre-internet outpost that suggested the possibility of culture clutching lust. And she did date--the OCD guy who drove in every month from rural Pennsylvania to take her to Chanterelle; the pianist who never got over the fact of Evgeny Kissin ("Pure marketing," he'd seethe); the programmer living with his mother in Forest Hills. Even then I saw how brave my friend was, the sturdy hopefulness needed for the process.

Next week is "Otello" in a $15 family circle seat. I hope Peter remembers to bring me a sandwich from Zabar's for the intermission.

(Enid Stubin is assistant professor of English at Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York, and writes a New York diary for The Reader magazine.)