Mercury was in retrograde during the week of symphony and opera opening nights.

How else to explain the week's surreal atmosphere? After a sweltering and cramped patrons' reception at Davies Symphony Hall, tended by appallingly bad photographers (attendees, dressed to kill, were ready for their close-ups, but to no avail), there was the infamous fire alarm that put the kibosh on opening night three minutes before the end.

The cultural coitus interruptus sent many stunned guests home, bypassing the after-party at City Hall. Brave Jan Harris, the evening's chair, who had planned what should have been a perfect fete, put on her best face to mask disappointment. She marshaled up her lieutenants, Laura Arrillaga and Patrick Herning, to help salvage the party.

Then, three days later, opera director Pamela Rosenberg managed to top even the fire alarm upset by presenting an opera that made a lobotomy seem a humane alternative. The opera, The Mother of Us All, about Susan B. Anthony and the suffrage movement, was a collaboration between Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein. You have to applaud Rosenberg for bringing more modern works to the calendar, but for opening night, it was a tough sell for socialites weaned on The Magic Flute and La Bohème.

Not that there wasn't a wonderful, demented irony to the choice. Was Rosenberg prescient in selecting an opera about women's right to vote, perhaps making a commentary about the recall and contemporary politics? Or was it a little derision aimed at the audience, partially populated with women still living Stepford lives mocked as regressive by two famously homosexual artists?

Whatever the explanation, many in the audience exercised their right to vote— with their feet. After intermission, scores of seats went empty, as the social crowd absconded to the patrons' dinner tent.

The reviews inside the tent were damning. "Someone said it was less about women's suffrage than audience sufferage," one gal told the Socialist. The sufferance offered everyone a conversation piece: "I'm all for the vote—I vote we get drinks during the second act." Another added, "Let's just say this wouldn't fall into audience development."

But if the performance onstage was ultimately unsatisfying, the theatrics offstage among our city's social butterflies made for a lively, entertaining kickoff to the fall season. Tatiana Sorokko, who, with her gallerist hubby, Serge, hosted a table at the symphony, arrived at that opening in a striking, modern Ralph Rucci gown printed with an image of "Renaissance Hands." Among her party was pal Georgette Mosbacher, the Borghese makeup queen, New York hostess, and GOP fund-raiser, who had flown in from L.A. to attend the opening and a lunch thrown by Denise Hale earlier in the day. The ebullient New Yorker charmed all with her candid, outspoken views on politics, taking a poll around the table on how everybody would vote on the recall and snapping each one with her new camera/cell phone.

At the opening,

Mosbacher's take on the goings-on was surprisingly positive. "We New Yorkers think we have the monopoly on glamour," Mosbacher told the Socialist. "But it's exciting and glamorous to be here."

She was joined by a roll call of social folks ranging from Dede Wilsey, Marcia Goldman, and Maria Manetti Farrow to young stunners Cecilia de Quesada and Laura Arrillaga. But the array of cliques masked the ever-present tension between old and nouveau, which was exacerbated by an over-the-top display of excess penned by the Chron's fashion editor and published the weekend before the openings. It followed opera gala cochairs Cathy MacNaughton and Sallie Huntting on a trip, via MacNaughton's private jet, to Beverly Hills on a shopping and borrowing spree at Harry Winston and other boutiques on Rodeo Drive. There was even a hysterically unironic photo that ran showing the cochairs, joined by event designer Robert Fountain, in a fab-four pose crossing Rodeo Drive à la the Beatles on Abbey Road.

The reaction, or condemnation, rather, was swift, as evidenced by the chitter chatter at both openings. One fourth-generation gal referred to it as a "gaudy article" and wondered about the security issues of advertising you'll be wearing a million dollars' worth of jewelry. She was joined by another top socialite, who snickered that it was "incredibly tacky," while another commented that "it was the only way they'll get their picture in the social pages—by working through these gala committees. It used to be you couldn't buy your way into opening night."

To be fair, much of the clucking is standard in social circles. But the article also roiled up the Opera Guild (the opera's social, fund-raising arm), which  was worried about the bad PR of being associated with such displays in these austere times. "The article was really in bad taste, and the guild's about good taste. People were upset—the purpose is to raise money, and not for personal gain," said one insider. Huntting, a socially ambitious woman, admitted to initiating the article, which MacNaughton, who had the financial resources (the MacNaughtons underwrote the gala), agreed to participate in. "They lectured us not to go over the top, and then say, ‘Uh-oh, who let Sallie Huntting loose?'" said Huntting. "I was going for fashion and glitz to give a new face to the guild." She succeeded.

At the opera opening, all eyes were transfixed by MacNaughton, who wore a gold Baracci gown that, owing to a plunging décolletage, made risqué cleavage as big a topic as the doomed opera. The decor, gilt and teal with

a faux foyer hung with gold-framed paintings, combined with a heftier price tag for the patrons' dinner ($2,500 versus $1,500 for the symphony), made for a splashy opulence. Satin reigned among guests such as Toni Wolfson, who wore a diamond and emerald necklace borrowed from Liz Taylor, and Elisa Stephens, dressed in a red ruched gown with a matching ruby and diamond Art Deco Van Cleef & Arpels necklace. Athena Blackburn, who made it both nights, showed up at the opera in a pale blue Richard Tyler gown that she joked "matched the decor."

Also attracting attention were Karen and Oliver Caldwell, who were sitting in the coveted Box Y. Indeed, someone came up to the Caldwells during a chat with the Socialist and asked, "How'd you manage to get that box?" Which, in the long tradition of people watching and keeping social scorecards at the opera, only proves the old adage, "The more things change..."