THE BOWL’S BIRTH

“A Bowl Full of Memories” (by Kristine McKenna, June 30) states that the Los Angeles Philharmonic officially opened the first Hollywood Bowl season on July 11, 1922. Semantically, that is correct, but the official opening of the Bowl itself took place three days earlier, on July 8, with a gala performance of “Carmen” starring the renowned Belgian diva Marguerite Sylva. Tenor Edward Johnson, later to become general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, co-starred.

This gala performance paid for 10,000 new seats in the Bowl, and the press headlined the event as having been witnessed by 40,000 people--the largest audience the Bowl has ever held. (No gates had yet been constructed to inhibit gate-crashers.)

The late conductor Johnny Green, in one of his last concerts at the Bowl in the ‘80s, recalled to his audience having attended that spectacular event as a youth, and the staggering impression made on him by the glorious singers, the four-story sets between which hung the monumental curtain, and the hordes of people, mules and horses descending the Otto K. Olesen-lit hillside leading into the smugglers’ lair onstage.

KAY E. KUTER

North Hollywood