'I wanted to see what it was like. Now I'm hooked'

Not so long ago, a chairman of the Royal Opera House famously said that he wouldn't want to sit next to someone at Covent Garden wearing "a smelly pair of trainers". What a turnaround, then: this week, at the opening show of the new season, Don Giovanni was performed to an audience that had bought tickets through an offer in the Sun newspaper. At the entrance stood the Sun's double-decker bus, festooned with helium balloons, while page three girls - fully clad - welcomed punters through the House's hallowed doors.

To be sure, this was a different crowd from that which usually turns up for the Royal Opera's first nights - but, with a scattering of dinner jackets and dickie bows, it was certainly a dressy one. Although slightly younger than normal, the crowd was no less overwhelmingly white. But it was notably good-natured. One of the disappointments of an ordinary visit to the ROH can be the rudeness of members of the audience, as if paying £150 for a stalls seat necessarily goes with sharpened elbows at the bar. The Sun readers, who had paid between £7.50 and £30, were as nice as pie. Nor did mobile phones go off during the performance (as they often do), and there was no exodus at the interval, to the surprise of Victoria Newton, the Sun's assistant editor.

If the evening represented a turnaround for the ROH, the Sun - once a vehement critic of the one-off lottery grant for Covent Garden's refurbishment - had also come a long way. "Gorillaz played here recently," said Newton, referring to the Damon Albarn-Jamie Hewlett opera Monkey: Journey to the West. "They are definitely trying to make the place less elitist."

When Tony Hall, the ROH's executive director, came on stage to welcome the audience, he was also welcoming those watching the show live in 113 cinemas across the UK and abroad - a first for the ROH. The point was, he told me, to "start the season with almost an anti-gala, celebrating the new season with people who haven't visited before". He added: "This is not a stunt. We want it to be something long-lasting."

Certainly many who saw Don Giovanni on Monday night plan to be back. Fifty-year-old Barbara Warren from Essex, a Sun reader who had never been to the opera before, declared herself "totally sucked in. When they started singing, it made all the hair on the back of my neck rise up." Emeka Madumere, 25, from London, came because his girlfriend wanted to, and because the price was right. "If I have to pay £300 for a ticket, I'm never going to do that for a risk," he explained. "I just wanted to see what it was like - and now I'm hooked." Among the first-timers there were also plenty of regular opera-goers, many of them people who had taken advantage of discounted tickets to introduce their passion to friends. Andrew Spencer, 45, from London, said: "I've been several times, but my friends have all come for the first time tonight. They loved it. It was a slightly different atmosphere: people seemed a little unsure where to clap after certain arias, but when they did show their appreciation, they loved it." John Yugin, 60, from London, agreed. "There was a different atmosphere: it was a bit noisier, there was a bit more whistling and cheering, a bit more interruption from the audience, which is absolutely fine. More please."

So the barriers came down on Monday; tickets, however, are not normally capped at £30. There is a greater question, too, hanging over the ROH's attempt to crudely engineer its audience. Some might argue that the work will get the audience it deserves - pace Monkey: Journey to the West, which saw a significantly younger and funkier crowd at the Opera House than normal. On the other hand, Mozart cannot be blamed for Covent Garden's entanglement in the British class system. Hall's attempts to open up the Opera House surely deserve praise ·

· Additional reporting by Alexandra Topping