For a few hours every month, Jennifer Chun slips into the musical sanctuary of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, where luxurious stage sets and arias offer escape.
"With all of the other things that have been going on in our lives, [my daughter] and I have found the opera to be an oasis," Chun, 42, wrote in an e-mail message. The nights out are "a time when both of us can be together and drink in something we both love so much."
Thanks to an educational outreach program offered by Los Angeles Opera, Chun's 17-year-old daughter, Kathryn, scored orchestra seats eye-poppingly close to the stage -- free.
The little-known L.A. Opera 90012 program sponsors an essay contest each year for high schoolers to explain why they want to see opera. The 50 or so teenagers selected are rewarded with tickets to four performances for them and a parent or guardian. They also get backstage tours and pre-show talks about the art form from instrumentalists, singers or others involved in the productions.
And for Kathryn -- probably headed to UC Davis this fall -- it's a chance to spend time with her mother, a cellist and music teacher, before leaving home.
"There's no way I'd be able to connect with my mom like this," said Kathryn, who lives with her family in Lomita and surprised her mother with the tickets as a birthday gift. "We're so busy, it's just the one time we really get to talk with each other and share something cultured. It's really magnificent."
The tickets, worth about $155 apiece, are available through an anonymous donor, who recalls nights out with his mother at New York City plays and musicals as his lone happy childhood memories of her.
"The opportunity to participate in something and share something with her was enormous to me," said the 80-year-old donor, a film and television industry veteran.
His mother was a magazine drama critic, and the two related to each other best when discussing the shows they saw together.
He decided to fund the L.A. Opera program about seven years ago "to replicate the experience I had" growing up. And with ticket prices prohibitively steep for most families, the outreach effort offers parents and teenagers a cultural experience alien to most.
"I didn't have enough money to go to the opera, and I always wanted to go," said Hazel Kasusky, 15, a high school sophomore from San Fernando. Opera is "awful different from what you hear, like rock and pop. You like things when you get used to it."
