LA Opera, Dorothy Chandler Pavillion
June 14, 2025
We typically avoid LA Opera. We have yet to see one that we like. I’d been talking to a colleague who feels the same way as us and she mentioned that she’d read that the problem was with the balcony of the Dorothy Chandler. Apparently EVERYTHING sounds bad in that balcony. We had been looking for an opportunity to test that theory so when Julie told me she wanted to see Renée Fleming and I found orchestra seats for $60, we decided to give it a try.
There has been some civil unrest of late in LA, so I kept my eye on my email watching for the show to be canceled. As the day approached, LA Opera informed us that the show would go on owing to special permission from the mayor to hold indoor events. Let’s face it, the opera nerds are not the people causing a disturbance. We had planned to park at the Music Center and then take public transportation to Cole’s for French dip and pie (Cole’s has an amazing bourbon pecan pie), but Julie was not convinced that the people on the train would be friendly. So instead we met in the Music Center parking lot where I’d parked on level 6 and she parked on level 5, but we were at least on the same side of the parking lot. Since Julie had been joking that we’d turned into Frasier and Niles, I brought us each a tiara and a pair of opera gloves. We still need to get the “fur” stoles and a lot of ostentatious jewelry, but all in due time. We arrived early enough to stop at the step and repeat for pictures in our gloves and tiaras with plenty of time left to use the restroom before making our way to our seats.
I could immediately tell this was going to be a different experience. We entered through Door 6 and made out way to our seats in row W. In the balcony, there’s no leg room and you sit with your knees under your chin. In the orchestra section, there’s enough room to walk to your seat without people needing to stand up. Our $60 seats were not bad. We weren’t dead center, but we were at least 8 seats from the aisle. Before the show began at 7:30, an announcement was made asking us to please turn off our phones because an emergency alert would go off at 8:00 regarding the curfew.
The show opened with Renée Fleming and friends singing “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better” from Annie Get Your Gun. It was a nice showcase of Renée’s vocal prowess. She sang higher, held notes longer and sang more sweetly (aka coloratura). After the opening number, the cast mostly took turns singing solos with a few duets and group numbers thrown in. The “friends” turned out to be well-known Broadway actors Tituss Burgess, Lindsay Mendez and Jessie Mueller and pianist Doug Peck. On Renée Fleming’s first turn to do a solo, she put her microphone down and sang an aria. It was beautiful. It was also the only one. The rest of the night was pure musical theater and quite enjoyable. At intermission, I told Julie that I felt like I knew Doug Peck and looked him up on Facebook to find we have 3 friends in common. She told me that the sound wasn’t really that great from the orchestra seats. I thought it was actually a lot better. The performers had some voice issues though. Once the second half started all of those issues disappeared. Tituss Burgess absolutely slayed “There’s A Boat Dat’s Leavin'” from Porgy and Bess, and Jessie Mueller knocked it out of he park with “She Used To Be Mine” from Waitress. Renée Fleming delivered a very moving performance of “So Big/So Small” from Dear Evan Hansen (which made me think that maybe next time it’s in town I should take Julie to see it – Hugh Jackman sang a song from Dear Evan Hansen last week too.)
After the show Julie mentioned that maybe it was the sound guy and not the balcony that’s the problem since the show got so much better in the second half. I think they were just ramping up in the first half and hit their stride in the second half. It was definitely worth the $60 I paid for these tickets. For the icing on the cake, the curfew had everyone off the streets by the time I got on the road. I’ve never gotten through Downtown and back on the freeway faster!