The gala-going crowd picked up right where New York Fashion Week left off on Sunday, with the annual opening night gala for the Metropolitan Opera.
Ahead of the production of “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” which opened the season, guests mingled throughout the opera lobby. Christine Baranski, an opera gala regular, was the first celebrity guest to arrive, dressed in a sharp black tuxedo dress.
“Isn’t this exciting!” a coiffed patron in a watermelon feathered gown gasped as she entered the room, over the sound of Champagne corks popping.
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Julianna Margulies whispered into her husband Keith Lieberthal’s ear as they made their entrance. She also opted for a simple black gown, as did Juliana Canfield, who arrived on the arm of boyfriend Edmund Donovan. It was also date night for “The Gilded Age” star Ben Ahlers and girlfriend Micaela Diamond, fresh off a run at New York Fashion Week — as were Sophia Bush and Ashlyn Harris and Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater.
Other VIPs included Laverne Cox, Ellen Burstyn, Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, John Turturro, Lorraine Toussaint, BJ Novak, Susie Essman, Christopher Abbott, Gina Gershon, Dana Delany, Odelya Halevi, Sydney Lemmon and Donna Murphy.
“I’ve actually had this for several years now, and I’ve never worn it,” said Cox of her red and black ensemble. “It’s Rei Kawakubo Comme des Garçons spring 2015, the ‘blood and roses’ collection. I own another piece from that collection that I wore to the Grammys a couple of years ago.”
“The reason I felt compelled to wear this is that in this collection, according to critics anyway, roses and blood were the two words [Rei used] backstage and it was her struggling to find beauty in something that was very disturbing,” Cox continued. “And that feels like it speaks to this moment, and me being an artist and needing to come to the opera and needing to come to the ballet and needing art in my life. Of trying to find beauty in these very disturbing times. So it felt right.”