Golden State: Gustavo Dudamel and Frank Gehry make a winning combination in Los Angeles, finds Katherine Syer

Gustavo Dudamel has led three different Wagner productions with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, his home orchestra of nearly fifteen years, in the last year and a half. In July of 2022, for Die Walküre, director Yuval Sharon experimented with green screen technology on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl. A few months later, the LA Philharmonic remounted The Tristan Project, which had premiered in architect Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Hall in 2004, when the venue was new. Conducting the opera for the first time, Dudamel opted to perform each of the opera’s acts on separate evenings. This January, with less emphasis on video design and more integrated scenic solutions, the LA Philharmonic’s production of Das Rheingold achieved something even more extraordinary.