Los Angeles keeps its Broadway on Grand Avenue. The Ahmanson Theatre at 135 North Grand Avenue is one of the four venues of the Music Center, the downtown performing-arts acropolis, and the city's principal house for large-scale theatre: pre-Broadway tryouts, the best of Broadway and West End tours, and Center Theatre Group's flagship productions have filled its stage since the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera opened it on 12 April 1967 with Man of La Mancha. Underwritten by financier Howard F. Ahmanson Sr. and named for his wife Caroline Leonetti Ahmanson, the Welton Becket-designed theatre was criticised for decades over its cavernous acoustics - until the 17-million-dollar renovation of 1993-1994 rebuilt the room from the inside: balconies curved in toward the stage, boxes added to narrow the hall, the ceiling lowered and re-panelled, and mobile dividers installed so capacity flexes from about 1,300 seats for intimate plays to 2,084-2,109 for blockbuster musicals. Miss Saigon christened the new configuration in January 1995, following the multi-year residency of The Phantom of the Opera that closed the old one. The house counts three levels - a 988-seat orchestra arranged continental-style in its front rows, a 606-seat mezzanine and 515-seat balcony reached from promenades overlooking Jerry Moss Plaza - and shares the hilltop with the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Mark Taper Forum and Disney Concert Hall, making the Music Center block the densest concentration of performing-arts seats west of Manhattan. The premiere ledger justifies the address: world or American premieres staged here have moved on to Broadway runs and Tony campaigns for decades, and the annual season mixes those launches with the biggest touring titles - the room's flexible capacity letting Center Theatre Group program a chamber drama and a spectacle musical in consecutive slots. Underground garages serve the Music Center hill, the Metro's Civic Center station sits two blocks east, and Grand Park rolls out below the plaza for pre-curtain evenings.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 135 North Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, United States, 90012

Website: https://www.centertheatregroup.org

Capacity: 2084

Opening Date: 12/04/1967

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