The first New York stage performance of Richard Strauss’s “Daphne” last night inspired the look and feel of New York City Opera’s coinciding gala.

Laurel wreaths designed by David Stark of Avi Adler reached to the high ceilings of the New York State Theater’s promenade. Many female guests, including Claire Eckert, chose green or floral gowns, echoing the costume of the opera’s star, Elizabeth Futral. There were plenty of greens on the menu, too, complementing crab and beef dishes. Not to mention the 1 million greenbacks raised for the opera.

Then there were the thematic parallels between the classical Greek myth of Daphne and City Opera. Like the tree Daphne becomes, the opera will be keeping its roots down at Lincoln Center (its long-considered move downtown was axed earlier in the summer). And it is charting its future with a new chairman, Susan Baker, who hopes to widen the audience.

“We’re known among the opera cognoscenti. I want to make people in New York more aware of what we are,” said Ms. Baker.

Before the performance, the opera’s artistic and general director, Paul Kellogg, presented Ms. Baker with a potted tree and announced the opera recently planted another in Central Park in her honor. Fortunately for Ms. Baker, unlike Daphne, she found love in a mortal – her husband Michael Lynch, whom she acknowledged on stage: “There’s only one man in the world I love more than Paul Kellogg, and that’s my husband.”