New York, September 25, 2006 – The Metropolitan Opera has been trying to reach out to a broader audience, and so the company simulcast the season’s opening night – Madama Butterfly directed by Oscar-winner Anthony Minghella – free-of-charge for crowds in both the Lincoln Center Plaza and in Times Square. But what better way to attract the public’s attention than with hot-and-cold running celebrities? Biggest coup of the evening – on again/off again lovers Jude Law and Sienna Miller brought her mother, Jo Miller. Is it getting serious? Sienna looked smashing, although we didn’t spot a ring on her finger. Also making opera glamorous were Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber, Sean Connery and wife Micheline, David Bowie and Iman, Meg Ryan and Liv Tyler.

The Metropolitan’s strategy seems to be bringing the philistines to the opera: when ballet great Mikhail Baryshnikov arrived, someone next to us squealed, “Isn’t that the guy from Sex and the City?”