Hercules vs the Vampires Review: LA Opera Just Beat the Movie Palace Final Boss

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The Nightlife Report Official Review · United Theater on Broadway, Downtown LA · Oct 30 and 31, 2026

The Verdict

Here is the claim we will defend in any comment section: the most exciting opera night in Los Angeles this year did not happen in an opera house. It happened in a 1927 movie palace on Broadway, over a 1961 Italian monster movie, with a muscle-bound Mr. Universe on screen and a live orchestra under him. LA Opera took a film most people have never seen and made it impossible to forget. That is not a gimmick. That is the future of the art form wearing a toga.

The Good

• Lip-sync at grand-opera volume. Live singers voiced every character in time with the screen. Hard mode, no save points.
• A conductor’s debut on a moving target. Blair Salter, LA Opera’s Head of Music, made her company conducting debut leading a score that must land on film cues, not on a singer’s breath.
• The building is a final-level map. Spanish Gothic vaults, restored murals, a glowing dome. You do not attend this room. You enter it.
• Camp, taken seriously. Lines like “Zeus! Give me strength” sung with full operatic conviction. The audience laughed with it, never at it.
• A costume contest with real stakes, judged by LA Opera’s own costume artisans.

The Bad

• Short run. Two nights. A show this good deserves a residency.
• Subtitle tax. It is sung in English with subtitles; your eyes split between screen, words and stage.
• Front-row neck check. The orchestra rows sink toward the stage, so the closest seats look up. Sit mid-house for the best view of film and singers together.
• Purists will grumble that a monster movie is not “real” opera. We think they are wrong, and we want that debate.

Walkthrough: How to Beat the Night

Level 1 — The Approach. Walk Broadway at dusk. Look up at the thirteen-story United Artists tower and the “Jesus Saves” signs on the roof. Partner hotel guests at Stile Downtown LA by Kasa can cross straight into the theater.

Level 2 — The Hall. Inside, take a minute under the dome before the lights drop. Find the murals of United Artists’ founders.

Level 3 — The Screen Lights Up. Mario Bava’s Hercules in the Haunted World opens in full Technicolor. Reg Park is Hercules. Christopher Lee is Lycos, a ruler hungry for immortality.

Level 4 — The Mouths Move, the Opera Answers. The original dialogue is gone. Patrick Morganelli’s score and adapted libretto take its place, sung live: Joel Balzun’s Hercules, Alexis Seminario’s spellbound Dianara, Gabriel Manro’s Lycos, and a full roster of heroes, witches and gods. 75 minutes, no intermission.

RelatedForty Years of Fire: How LA Opera Went From an Olympic Dream to Hercules vs Vampires on Halloween Night

Level 5 — The Underworld. Hercules descends to rescue the woman he loves. Bass James Hayden arrives as the God of Evil. The orchestra goes full boss music.

Boss Fight — The Costume Contest (Oct 31). After the film, the afterparty begins. Togas, fangs and pure invention. Judges from the LA Opera costume department. Prizes: ten thousand dollars for first plus VIP tickets and a private Costume Shop tour, two thousand five hundred for second and five hundred for third, each with VIP tickets, funded by an anonymous donor.

Check out our next article for the Halloween costumes.

Lore: The Palace on Broadway

In 1919, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin broke from the studio system and formed United Artists. Their West Coast flagship rose at 929–933 S. Broadway in 1927. Pickford herself worked the steam shovel at the March 1927 groundbreaking, with Buster Keaton and John Barrymore among the guests. Crews worked three shifts, around the clock, to finish it.

Walker & Eisen (Albert R. Walker and Percy A. Eisen) designed the office tower, for years the tallest private building in the city. Detroit’s C. Howard Crane, architect of more than 250 theatres, designed the auditorium, his only West Coast work, modelled on the sixteenth-century cathedral of Segovia. Anthony Heinsbergen painted the murals. Motion Picture News called it “the final word in theatre construction.”

Later decades brought Gene and Melissa Scott’s Los Angeles University Cathedral, then quiet years. In 2012 the Ace Hotel group took it on. GREC Architects led the work with Spectra Company and Historic Building Services, restoring terra-cotta, plaster and the Heinsbergen murals, and relighting the dome. The Theatre at Ace Hotel reopened on February 14, 2014 and won a Los Angeles Conservancy Preservation Award. In January 2024 the hotel became Stile Downtown Los Angeles by Kasa, and the room took back a name worthy of its past: the United Theater on Broadway.

This is the restoration of old Broadway grandeur, and it is the whole point. The old world built palaces for the people. Los Angeles is reclaiming them, one full house at a time.

Lore: The House That Domingo Helped Build

LA Opera’s roots run to 1948, when furniture maker Francesco Pace staged opera on a shoestring in Beverly Hills. The modern company was born from the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, when London’s Royal Opera filled the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Founders including attorneys Don Franzen, Peter Funsten and Bernard A. Greenberg hired Peter Hemmings, and on October 7, 1986, the company opened with Verdi’s Otello starring Plácido Domingo. Domingo later served as General Director from 2003 to 2019. Kent Nagano became its first Music Director, James Conlon held the post for twenty years, and Domingo Hindoyan takes the baton from 2026. Today Christopher Koelsch leads the company as President and CEO, and its Off Grand series carries opera into venues across the city. Hercules vs Vampires first played for LA Opera in 2015 and came back by popular demand.

Who’s Who: Thank You

Your Move

Were you there? Tell us your take and share your photos: https://forms.gle/1K1T8EthxScC9LUi7. Agree with our 9.1? Fight us on it in Discord.

• Get the next review first: Join the Nightlife Report list
• Full galleries and insider coverage: patreon.com/aperlas
• Debate the score: discord.gg/P3bECmuYwA

Sources: LA Opera press release and event page; OperaWire; LA Conservancy; PCAD (University of Washington); Curbed LA; Spectra Company; LA Opera “Our Story”; Los Angeles Times; The New York Times.

Anthony Perlas · nightlifereport.app

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