Seemingly, the Hollywood Bowl has existed forever, or at least as long as the Hollywood Sign. Tucked away on the west side of the Hollywood freeway (the 101 for Angelinos) on the edge of Cahuenga Pass, the Bowl, in addition to being the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is one of the premier concert venues in Southern California. The bowl itself is a natural phenomenon, something created for plays and concerts. The topography of the hill is responsible for a natural theatre with amazing acoustics. However, as good as the acoustics were, Angelinos couldn’t leave the bowl in its natural state, it needed improvements.

In the post war decade of the 1920’s Angelinos were building out a world class destination place worthy of grand public places. As a grand outdoor concert venue the Bowl needed a grand edifice to celebrate both the city and reward concert goers. A couple of things needed immediate attention. First, in the growing automobile culture of the 1920’s there was an obvious need for parking. Seating to accompany guests for the symphony was also in order. Last on the short list of improvements was a stage and shell to compliment the natural acoustics of the bowl.

The story of the original arched shell built in 1926 and the terrible acoustics it created, much worse than the natural sound that attracted visitors in the first place, I’ll leave for another day. Today I want to focus on one of the fundraisers for the improvement of the space.

As an event to fund the benches for the audience, the committee assigned to make improvement chose Bizet’s opera, including a complete set of Seville,Spain which extended along the sides of the wood stage. Carmen was performed on July 8, 1922, three days before the official opening of the Philharmonic’s “Symphonies Under the Stars” season. Unlike the symphonic concerts performed in the 21^st century, a cast of nearly five hundred were involved in the complete production of the opera, according to Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed writing about a symphonic concert production of Carmen in 2008.

The Archives of the Southern California Railroad Museum (SCRM) has a photograph of the opera on a glass plate. The plate went into a projector and was designed to be viewed on a screen or wall for public presentations. Superseded by television and movies, public talks drew large crowds in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries as explorers and public speakers doubled as educators and entertainment. The glass plate projector the museum owns was eclipsed by a 35mm slide projector and then programs like PowerPoint. The photo was taken as a documentary type image for the purpose of telling people about the new venue and the grand productions that were possible in the space. The photo is a positive image, like a 35mm slide, leading me to think it was printed on the slide and is not the original image. Printing on glass for presentations was common one hunderd years ago.

I made a short video showing off both the projector and the image of Hollywood Bowl’s first Carmen here: https://youtu.be/PzmKWeQuE4A