Dorothy Chandler Pavilion experiences storage squeeze

Anyone driving past the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion these last few weeks has no doubt seen various opera sets and props sitting forlornly outside the building. Some of them are protected from the elements by tarps; some are not.

As the Los Angeles Opera embarks on its biggest season in its nearly 23-year history, the company is running up against a perennial problem: a space crunch that forces the technical crews to store sets and other movable equipment on the veranda facing 1st Street.

The squeeze is a result of a lack of storage space at the 3,200-seat venue, which opened 45 years ago and currently serves as the home of the opera company.

"When we have a number of productions on stage at the same time, often all of the physical elements don't fit in the building simultaneously," said Jeff Kleeman, technical director of L.A. Opera. "So we use the sides of the buildings basically as a back lot for scenery that you have involved in the current repertory."

He added that the alternative would be to take some of the sets apart, ship them elsewhere and bring them back in time for performances or rehearsals. "So we roll it outside by our loading doors in as big of pieces as possible. It takes the least amount of time," he said.

Currently, the company is juggling productions of Donizetti's "The Elixir of Love" and Wagner's "Siegfried," which opens today.

L.A. Opera said the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which for many years served as the home of the L.A. Philharmonic and the Academy Awards ceremony, doesn't have large underground storage for sets that is common at larger houses such as the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Logic would suggest that L.A. Opera's technically ambitious "Ring" cycle will be particularly taxing on the building, especially in 2010 when the company mounts three complete cycles of Wagner's four-opera epic. But the company said that because director Achim Freyer uses many of the same sets for the operas, the need for storage won't be great.

The busiest period for the company occurred at the beginning of the 2008-09 season, during the simultaneous productions of Puccini's "Il Trittico" and Howard Shore's "The Fly." In addition, the company was rehearsing the Robert Wilson production of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" at the time.

"That was by far the busiest time for us," Kleeman said.

-- David Ng

Photo: A big red hand sits outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown L.A. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Comments

[C. Danni]

I believe the amount of seating in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was reduced some years ago and no longer contains 3,200 seats. More importantly, the rather messy or makeshift look of the building at moments like this, with stuff sitting outside its exterior walls, indicates the idea that the DCP requires extensive improvement is not an indulgence.

I recall reading years ago the former director of the San Francisco Opera saying his advice in the early 1960s on how the DCP should have been designed to accomodate major stage-oriented programming went unheeded. Not too surprising because planning for the Music Center occurred at a rather humble time in the city's history, when the main building really was needed only for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The backstage layout of the DCP is modest not only by the standards of the Metropolitan Opera House, but also by the standards of a new building for opera in Miami (described as having the largest, most technically advanced stage accomodations outside of New York City) and one recently completed in Dallas -- which will premiere in a few weeks.

Moreover, the DCP is inadequate not just when it comes to storage space. It's limited in other ways too.

I had a seat in the top balcony last year to watch a performance of "Das Rheingold," and due to the stage's frame not being high enough, the back portion of the stage itself generally was cut off from view.

Beyond the purely technical, I remember seeing the column of a music critic for a newspaper in Canada (I think based in Toronto) who visited the West Coast a few years ago to check out the cultural scene. He made a point to describe the auditorium of the opera house in San Francisco as being more impressive or attractive than one in the DCP.

[Artist]

I wonder if they still have the million dollar stage prop from when they did Beowolf?