Peggy Parker Grauman

Peggy Parker Grauman brings all the professionalism of a paid worker to the job of volunteer chairwoman of the Music Center Opera gala heralding the fall social season Sept. 4. She also brings as co-chair her husband, Walter Grauman, the well-known director of many "Murder, She Wrote" episodes starring Angela Lansbury. The party follows the premiere of director Gotz Friedrich's production of Beethoven's "Fidelio."

Peggy Parker Grauman brings all the professionalism of a paid worker to the job of volunteer chairwoman of the Music Center Opera gala heralding the fall social season Sept. 4. She also brings as co-chair her husband, Walter Grauman, the well-known director of many "Murder, She Wrote" episodes starring Angela Lansbury. The party follows the premiere of director Gotz Friedrich's production of Beethoven's "Fidelio."

If to live is to spend, and the greatest joy of spending is to buy the unbuyable, then the weekend auction at the Music Center's "LA Alive!" black-tie gala was to die for. "Our goal was to have the kind of luxury items you can't go out and just pay for," said co-executive chair Joy Fein. Some items were adventures more than luxuries, such as a night on patrol with a Los Angeles Police Department helicopter or pit passes to the Indianapolis 500.

The Scene: The fifth anniversary party for the Los Angeles Music Center Opera, held Friday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Guests followed a red carpet to the artists' entrance of the theater for cocktails backstage, before moving onto the stage for a sit-down dinner with dancing between courses. Diners stared out at the thousands of seats in the Pavilion as they ate, reinforcing the old notion that a dinner party is really a theater piece.

Los Angeles Music Center Opera's fall Season Opening Night Gala on Sept. 4 in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center already has socialites screening the new ball gowns. Neiman Marcus recently saluted the 22 women who have chaired the benefit galas since the opera company was founded 10 years ago. More than 100 gowns premiered down the runway for an appreciative crowd of best-dressed.

The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and UCLA's business school made beautiful music together Saturday night. The occasion was the black-tie dinner after the orchestra's season-opening concert at Royce Hall. It was an affair that brought together the First Chair Society, the orchestra's major financial supporters, with board members from the John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA.

The Event: Hellfire, damnation and the worst of the summer heat were banished in style as the Los Angeles Music Center Opera opened its eighth season with a new production of Gounod's "Faust." The performance was followed by a gala benefit dinner on the Music Center plaza, where guests danced to the big-band music of Rudy Varon. Five hundred gala patron subscribers and others paid $650 to attend the event, benefiting the Opera.

After the Los Angeles Music Center Opera mounted Beethoven's "Fidelio," a monumental tale of anguish and the triumph of courage, faith and love, 700 black-tie party-goers put on a collective happy face for the season-opening party.

If we asked you to place Giovanna Ferragamo in her natural habitat, what city would you pick? Milan, the capital of Italian fashion, or Florence, the style maven's hometown? What about dance icon Twyla Tharp? Wouldn't you expect to find her in New York, ground zero for contemporary dance? All those distant cities would eat up a nice chunk of frequent flier miles for any Angeleno, but the truth is that both women trace their professional roots to Los Angeles.

No one ever said rock musicians had cornered the market on groupies. Esa-Pekka Salonen, with his cherubic, unlined face and lighthearted manner, was the darling of the classical music set when the board of directors of the Founders League of the Music Center officially welcomed the L. A. Philharmonic's music director-designate at a concert, reception and dinner Thursday night. The Founders League is the association of the center's major donors. So what if Salonen had to conduct for his supper?

Fall means opera, the official opening of the September social season. Peggy Parker-Grauman and Jennifer Diener host a kickoff committee meeting at a luncheon Tuesday at Patina on Melrose. The fifth season of the Los Angeles Music Center Opera opens Sept. 4 with the gala benefit premiere of Beethoven's only opera, "Fidelio." Parker-Grauman and her husband, Walter Grauman, are chairing the evening and Jennifer and Royce Diener are co-chairmen.