birdstrike:
It all depends where you are sitting. If you are in the stalls (the frontmost seats) then you will find that very few chaps are without a tie (evening wear has died out except for first nights). If you are "Up in the gods" (the cheap seats at the back on the topmost level), then you will be fine.
In any event, you will not be turned away from the Opera. And if you speak straight away in your best American accent you may even get away with it at a restaurant that would ask me "does sir have a tie". Did I say "Americans are better tippers"?
Should that restaurant be "Rules"? e-mail them and ask.
You don't need a suit at all if you are not going into a business office.
Just over a year ago I had the misfortune to see the dreadful production of Don Giovanni at the English National Opera. There was certainly no need for any dress code on that occasion !!! The singers wore ripped jeans, there was a car on stage at one point, and the booing at the end was intense! It even made the regular press. Here's an old quote about what you (fortunately) missed.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Mozart gets 'Tarantino' treatment
by Luke Leitch
Boos, whistles and catcalls echoed all through the London Coliseum last night as opera's cognoscenti reacted with horror to a violent new production of Don Giovanni featuring sex scenes and drug-taking.
Spanish director Calixto Bieito's "updated" production of Mozart's classic for the English National Opera features opera's most famous womaniser reduced to having sex behind a car and at the back of a bar, snorting cocaine and enjoying a drug-fuelled orgy.
Giovanni is portrayed as gun-carrying lecher, and instead of being dragged to hell at the end, as in the original, he is ritually stabbed to death by the characters whose lives he has defiled.
Afterwards audience member Michael Seligman, a 63-year-old investment consultant, branded the new Don Giovanni an insult to Mozart's memory.
He said: "I certainly booed the producer. I would never see another performance of his again. Mozart is a very subtle man; the director is as subtle as a donkey."</font>
[This message has been edited by WHBM (edited 02-19-2003).]