Karolina, after the final curtain

Curtain down at twenty past ten, applause for another eight minutes, and Karolina is already folding the programme into her bag. Tall at 174 cm and slim, she moves through an opera crowd without touching a single elbow. Jet black hair falls straight and long, the eyes are brown, and the dress is black and cut clean enough to hang in a design museum. Poised is the right word, never stiff. She lives in Covent Garden, is in her late twenties, and treats the piazza as her front garden.

Discretion is her strongest habit. Karolina never names a guest, never guesses out loud who sits at the next table, and never looks at her phone in company. Her wit is dry and arrives sideways. She plays piano most days, Chopin mostly, badly when tired, she says, and beautifully when not. Opera is the passion. Architecture walks cure everything else, and she can explain a cornice on Bow Street in a way that makes it matter. English, measured and exact.

For a night that begins at the Royal Opera House, meet her at your hotel first. A glass of champagne at six, the short walk to Bow Street, and the interval spent under the glass roof of the Paul Hamlyn Hall while she tells you which voice to listen for after the bell. Afterwards, supper nearby, nothing heavy, then back to the hotel along streets she narrates like a private tour. The lift ride is where the dry joke usually lands.

Her home ground sits inside the West End. Show nights fill early, so see the rates for a dinner date and message the desk with the date of the curtain.