First, when we're walking past the ticket collectors we notice this guy standing on the sidelines with a huge camera, taking people's picture as they pass by as if this is a souvenir moment to be savored, on a par with cresting the top of a roller coaster.

To protest the commodification of this precious moment, I ducked my head down when the flash went off. Then it turned out that they weren't, actually, photographing everyone, and that what they were doing is collecting pictures of happy, young opera-goers to use in some sort of ad brochure.

So we could have been a symbol of all that is young and chic if I weren't so paparazzi-shy.

Our current year's tickets put us in the front section of the house, where the median age is roughly ninety and everyone is held together by rouge and sequins. We had scarcely taken our seats when this ancient lady settled herself in front of us and threw a mink coat over the back of her seat to dangle over our legs.

Immediately she turned around and said, "That isn't bothering you, is it? You can touch it. It's real."

All through the rest of the night, we kept whispering in an undertone to each other, "Touuuuch it," in that threatening tone of voice that Homer Simpson uses.