NEW YORK – Opera is an art form that favours extravagant appetites. For every dining-obsessed Don Giovanni, Falstaff or Alfredo, there is an opera-inspired dish of peach Melba, tournedos Rossini or pasta alla Norma.

But the marriage of music and cuisine is nowhere more evident than at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, where feeding about 3,800 audience members and 3,000 employees each performance is itself a production of operatic proportions.