What arts event drew Kitty Carlisle Hart, Coco and Arie Kopelman, and a slew of Newhouses to the Lower East Side? The opening of Gotham Chamber Opera’s sixth season Thursday night at Henry de Jur Playhouse.

“Don’t you just love it? It’s a jewel box,” Mrs. Kopelman, the chairwoman of the opening night gala, said.

Gotham Chamber Opera specializes in an intimate opera experience, and the playhouse, with 350 seats, is an ideal venue. But it is the track record of the company’s artistic director, Neal Goren, that compels the uptown opera fans to make the journey to 466 Grand St.

The opera this season is “Albert Herring,” by Benjamin Britten. It tells the story of a young, isolated man thrust into the spotlight when the town’s leaders select him as “May King.”

New York cultural leaders in the audience included the chairwoman of the New York City Opera, Susan Baker; the president of the Alliance for the Arts, Russell Borscheidt; the founder of the New Globe Theater (a project for Governor’s Island), Barbara Romer; a board member of both the Miller Theater and the New York Hall of Science, Anthony Viscusi, and Gotham Chamber Opera board members Karen Lerner, Asher Edelman, Louis Miano, and Brooke and Peter Duchin.

At the post-show party at the bar and lounge Libation, members of the cast gushed about performing opera on a small scale. “It’s the best time I’ve ever had,” Elizabeth Grohowski, who plays the housekeeper, said. “You have the ability to work on your character. You know the audience can see you, and you can see them react too,” Michael Zegarski, the vicar, said. The cast also includes members of the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus, Cara Fesjian, Avril Dunleavy, Madeline Weinstein, Zoe Soumkine, Peter Goldsmith, and Garrett Euker.

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If you haven’t found a Valentine’s Day gift for your opera-loving lover, consider the new coffee-table book that collects more than 200 photographs from the Metropolitan Opera’s 2004 and 2005 seasons. “In Grand Style: The Glory of the Metropolitan Opera” (Rizzoli, 240 pages, $85) is grand in scale, with each page almost a foot and a half wide. The size befits the drama and emotion of the operas depicted.

“When I was working, I was excruciatingly focused,” the book’s photographer, Nancy Ellison, told The New York Sun. “The operas exploded in my head.”

Ms. Ellison’s photographs reflect Richard Wagner’s notion of opera as a Gesamkunstwerk – a total artwork, fusing singing, acting, architecture, and design.

From Figaro and Susanna to Samson and Delilah, the book has enough couples, happy and sad (mostly sad), to satisfy lovebirds and lonely hearts.

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Finally, if rock is more your lover’s taste, pump up your romantic evening tomorrow with the new release from the Subways, whose lead talents are, appropriately enough, an engaged couple. In performance, front man Billy Lunn, 21, and bassist Charlotte Cooper, 19, dance, flirt, and bounce with the energy of young lovers. They also have talent and a great pop and punk sound that critics are watching closely. “Young for Eternity” (Sire Records) is being released tomorrow. The song to play for your valentine is “Rock & Roll Queen.” The band, rounded out by Mr. Lunn’s brother, Josh, on drums, has a gig at the Bowery Ballroom on March 7, as well as a scheduled appearance on “The Late Show With David Letterman.”