There were box seats for the VIPs and a "bleachers" section for the boisterous party crowd, with their beach blankets, sleeping bags and picnic hampers.
But the hottest tickets in town last night weren't to be found only at Dodger Stadium, where the home team bested the St. Louis Cardinals in the ninth inning of a playoff game. They also were being distributed downtown, where Gustavo Dudamel picked up his baton in his inaugural performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall as new music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
At Disney, the black-tied and diamond-bedecked set, including Don Johnson, Sherry Lansing, Dana Delany and Andy Garcia, strode a red carpet past lines of paparazzi and into the hall, where champagne flutes were being lifted.
Directly across the street, about 1,500 people packed into the Music Center plaza and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to munch $6 hot dogs, sip wine and watch a live simulcast on large TV screens of the young Venezuelan maestro leading a formidable double-header of John Adams' "City Noir," a world premiere, followed by Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D major.
The split-screen evening, with its two technologically intertwined venues, reflected twin facets of Dudamel. Inside the sleekly angular concert hall designed by Frank Gehry (in attendance, naturally) there was Dudamel the 28-year-old prodigy whom the classical music world has anointed its newest star.
On the flat screens at the Music Center there was the man dubbed "the people's conductor," extending the populist reach of his art form.
Both Dudamels proved to be a big hit.
"It's so intense. He just goes wild," Ariselda Herrera, 27, said of Dudamel's rendition of Adams' piece, during intermission. "It reminded me of a Disney movie. I was waiting for the bad guy to come out. It was kind of like 'Fantasia.' "
Herrera's friends were equally impressed.
"I love his hair. The way it bounces when he gets really into it is cute," said Laura Castaneda, 26.
"He's so cute. I love his dimples," chimed in Mariella Garcia, 23, who said she was skipping "The Vampire Diaries" on television to be there.
Inside Disney, Dudamel's initial appearance onstage was greeted enthusiastically by an audience that included his family, his mentor, Jose Antonio Abreu, a cross-section of Southern California's philanthropic elites and cultural intelligentsia and a smattering of Hollywood.
