What's Opera, Doc?

Finally, somebody turned off the oven.

Look, I love all the free and low-cost summer events like the outdoor movie screenings, the concerts, and Shakespeare in the park, but oh, holy hell, this summer was hot. After long stretches of triple-digit heat (even L.A. sizzled this summer), I was happy as hell when the temperatures dropped 20 degrees at the start of fall.

With fall, comes pumpkin lattes and a slew of cultural events. This week we’re talking opera, tours, and some arts freebies.

Let’s start with opera.

“But Jim, isn’t that just large women in horned helmets?”

Get one thing straight right now – I don’t go to the opera for horned helmets.

The only horned helmet I've ever done. Oh, and be advised, just like in What's Opera, Doc?, the girl usually dies.

  I go to hear Don Jose sing the flower song, trying to convince the temptress Carmen of his love.

I go to hear Athanael sing to a dying Thais that nothing is true but life and the love of human beings.

I go to see Manon seduce Des Grieux.

I go to see want and desire expressed in all its twisting-knife-in-the-gut agony. I go to see love expressed so beautifully it brings tears to your eyes.

I go because it so beautifully expresses the love and desire I feel for  my wife every waking moment.

Nope, I don’t do horned helmets.

Look, I’m very new to this art form. I’m still trying to figure out my Donizetti from my Rosetti and Verdi (I do know Wagner. I loathe Wagner). Until I met my wife, my only exposure to opera was the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon “What’s Opera, Doc?” I still giggle whenever I hear the Ride of the Valkyries (I’m going to kill the wabbit, I’m going to kill the wabbit).

But after accompanying my wife to a couple of operas I was hooked. I can appreciated great music, regardless of its genre, and a beautiful voice is a beautiful voice.

Piotr Beczala and opera goddess Anna Netrebko in a scene from Manon. Seriously, dude, you're going to say no to that? Yeah, I didn't think so.

If you want to give this art form a look, there’s a couple of ways to go without it costing you an arm and a leg. L.A. Opera offers tickets starting around $20 for the balcony (that’s where my wife and I have our season seats). If that section is sold out, keep calling the box. Sometimes us season holders turn tickets in when we can’t make a performance.

Discounts are hard to come by. There are rush tickets for seniors and students, but rarely for matinees and rarely for some of the more popular productions. I have seen tickets on Goldstar, but that is rare.

Tenor Vittoria Grigolo and soprano Nino Machaidze in the L.A. Opera's production of Romeo and Juliet.

There are two other affordable options if you want to just sample opera. One is the Live in HD series from the Met where operas are shown in movie theaters (each gets two showings, one live and then an encore a few days later). Last time I went, tickets were $22 each, steep for movie showing, but cheap for an opera.

You can also catch operas on TV from time to time with PBS Great Performances. There is a version of Carmen featuring Elina Garanca that is absolutely sizzling.

If you’re going to a performance at the L.A. Opera you have some dining options ranging from low-cost to high-end. If money is an issue (and when is it not, really?), you can picnic on one of the tables in the Music Center plaza and at Grand Park. Another option is the Tina Tacos stand on the plaza.
Sometimes we’ll hit Phillipe’s for French dip sandwiches before heading to the Music Center.

Elina Garanca and Roberto Alagna were perfect as the temptress and the obsessed Don Jose in the Met version of Carmen.

If you got the bucks, then go straight to Pinot. Depending on what you drink, a meal for two will set you back $60, depending on what you drink and whether you have dessert (which we always do, my wife says). If you’re there for a matinee and they have the brunch menu, I can recommend the French toast. So fluffy, it’s like eating little clouds.

If you do go to an opera, squeeze the hand of the one you love during the great aria. After the performance, look them straight in the eye and tell them they are your passion, your obsession. And, to borrow from U2, telling them they are the reason why the opera is in you.

A few quick hits:


What’s that, you say? You want your cultural offerings for free? I can help.

On Sunday, Sept. 29 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. you can see “The Dude” himself, Gustavo Dudamel via a giant screen TV at Grand Park. They are broadcasting the performance of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles from the Disney Hall into the park.

If you go, go early and bring a picnic. Events at Grand Park fill up quick.

And here’s another Disney Hall-related freebie – On Oct. 5, from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. the Music Center is presenting “10 Times the Party,” a celebration of the hall’s 10th anniversary. The event will be held in front of the hall and in it’s W.M. Keck Foundation Children’s Amphitheater, 111 South Grand Avenue.

The event includes music, dance, and arts workshops.

Over the next week weeks you’ll be hearing a lot about various tours you can take around L.A., starting with a great architecture tour. For now, let me offer up a suggestion on a fairly cheap, but wonderful set of tours – the L.A. Conservancy’s walking tours. My wife and I have done three or four of these tours, including the one for Union Station, the art deco tour, and the one for the Biltmore (aka the happiest place on Earth). They cost $10 a person for non-members, $5 for members.

For a great, low-cost date, do the Union Station tour and then go over to Olvera Street for taquitos at Cielito Lindo. You can cut down on the parking fee by using the park-and-ride lot at Universal City and taking the Red Line into Union Station (roundtrip for two $6).

On Sept. 28, Smithsonian magazine is sponsoring Free Museum Day. Several L.A. museums are participating, including the Petersen Automotive Museum, the Zimmer Children’s Museum, and the Pasadena Museum of Art. Find out more at the event website.

Another freebie coming up is Art Night in Pasadena on Friday, Oct. 11. Several museums and galleries will be open for free. There will also be a free shuttle service to get around to the different venues. We’ve got this penciled in our calendar. More information can be found at the event website.

We Become Villainized

It was a hot, steamy night and wife and I were both dripping in sweat. No, forget dripping – we were drenched in sweat.

Despite the heat and humidity, we wouldn’t have been anywhere else in the world that night.  We were seeing Vaud and the Villains, a band hotter and steamier than the weather that night.

So who is Vaud and the Villains? They are a 19-piece 1930s New Orleans band and cabaret show. Think Americana noire meets Moulin Rouge. The band is the creation of actors Andy Comeau (aka Vaud), a saxophone player, and his wife Dawn Lewis (aka Peaches Mahoney), one of the group’s smoking hot dancers.

Inspired by the Bruce Springsteen Seeger Sessions album, the villains’ shows included songs that have long been in the public domain songs, such as “O Mary Don’t You Weep,” “John Henry,” and “St. James Infirmary.”

The band is loaded with great musicians – guitar players, banjo pickers, piano players, a dude playing spoons on a washboard, a violinist, and a horn section complete with a tuba player. I’ve haven’t been this thrilled about a band with a tuba player since seeing Freebo with Bonnie Riatt’s band back in the 80s. I don’t think I’ve ever been thrilled by a band with a washboard player before, but then again I don’t travel in those circles.

In addition to Peaches, a redhead, the dancers include Frankie Mineli, a brunette, and Shadie Sadie Sinclair, a blonde (real names unknown to me despite a Google search). At our show there was a fourth dancer, a shorthaired brunette whose name, but not her curves, escaped me. (update: I'm informed the dancer goes by the name Jinx)

Dawn Lewis as Peaches Mahoney.

Here’s a link to the band’s official video.

I hadn’t heard of these guys until just a couple of months ago. Then I couldn’t stop hearing about them – they kept turning up in my searches for date ideas. Their recent shows in Los Angeles included a free concert at MacArthur Park and being the headliners of a Great Gatsby-themed party at the Park Plaza hotel.

Who are these guys? I wanted to find out, but every time there was a chance to see them, some scheduling conflict came up or, if the date worked, my wallet would suffer a money drought.

Then came TwentyWonder, a fundraiser for the Down Syndrome Association of Los Angeles. Put this event on your radar screen for next summer. During the course of that evening – and this just a partial list — we saw a 3-D printer for the first time, made trippy laser art, held a rock that was created during the universe's adolescence, saw Ernie Kovac's Emmy and his art, saw some impressive art from people with Down's syndrome, and got a piece of Greenland — all before the roller derby, the lucha libre wrestling, and the acoustic set of power pop artist Matthew Sweet.

Then we saw the mind-meltingly great set from Vaud and the Villains, the night’s headliners.  We were hooked.

Soon after TwentyWonder, I looked their schedule up and saw they were doing a show at the Ford Amphitheater.

If Vaud and the Villains are my new musical find, the Ford is my new venue find. How a 90-plus-year-old venue and I, a Southern Californian for more than 40 years, never met is something of a mystery.

If you haven’t been to the Ford, think of it as a miniature Hollywood Bowl with about a fourth of the cost and hassle.

For openers, the Ford seats 1,200, a size that allows you to actually see and have a more intimate show with the performer than the 17,000-plus seat Hollywood Bowl.  Look, I love going to shows at the Hollywood Bowl, but there have been times when I have felt I was part of a herd going off to the stockyards.

The entrance to the Ford.

You won’t see major performers there like at the Bowl, but when a venue is savvy enough to bring Vaud and the Villains, you become curious as to what other great talent you’ve been missing.

I have seen discount tickets for most, if not all, shows at the Ford on Goldstar. Tickets were listed for $30 each, not including service charges, but we got two tickets from Goldstar for $41, including service charges.

When we go to the Bowl, we use their park-and-ride bus service, which costs $5 a person to get a seat on a large metro bus. For the Ford, they use smaller, dial-a-ride size buses. The cost? Nothing. Zip.

 Discounted tickets, free parking, and a free shuttle – you got to love it already. Our only other costs that night were for tacos - $16 for six. Total date cost: $57 for a show, parking, a shuttle, and dinner.

The Ford today.

Just like the Bowl, you can picnic at the Ford. Food and beverages, including alcohol, are allowed. There are some nice spots to set up a picnic, but we arrived too late to grab one. We had our tacos, along with the wine we brought, at our seats. We made a mental note to plan a picnic next time and arrive a bit earlier.

So what happens when you bring a smoking band into a great venue? You get about 1,000 people dancing in their seats and in the aisles. There were people at the show who clearly had no idea who Vaud and the Villains were. I overheard one conversation with a woman who brought a group of 60 people to see the show and none of them knew the band. I saw her and many in her party dancing the night away.

We were dancing too.

The Ford in the 1920s, shortly after being built.

A couple of quick notes: First, as of this writing, Vaud and the Villains were heading off for some East Coast shows. They frequently play clubs in Los Angeles and Long Beach. Check their site for show dates. 

Second, the Ford has shows scheduled through mid-October, including free shows under their  JAMS program. Some of these shows, okay, many of these shows, are a bit esoteric (accordion night, anyone?), but what's life without some new flavors from time to time?