A Breeze of Summer: ‘Pageant of the Masters' Tickets Go on Sale

It's damp out as December begins, and while we might not be donning the down-filled parkas of people in more northerly climes, Southern California is feeling pretty wintry, all told.

Which makes a surprising breeze from a future summer all the more delightful and delightfully disarming.

Such a breeze blew through our worlds on the first day of the calendar's final month, which is when Pageant of the Masters tickets officially went on sale.

True, cultural happenings very often make tickets available to the public many months in advance, but the long-running tableaux vivant usually hangs the "tickets" sign on its proverbial box office over eight months ahead of its summertime debut, or a full two-thirds of a year.

This gives fans ample opportunity to plan their visits — and, yes, some people are in the audience several times each summer — while anticipation has the time to build.

Pageant of the Masters is, after all, one of California's best-known on-stage spectaculars. It's been around since the early 1930s, and the performers in the footlights? They're standing incredibly still, all to replicate some of the planet's best-known paintings and sculptures.

As always, the Laguna Beach happening boasts a memorable theme, and the 2023 event will delve into the concept of bygone art colonies, the storied spots where artists, inventors, and thinks gathered to exchange ideas, do the work, and grow their talents.

Over 40 recreated pieces of art will be featured in the pageant, which will be marking its 90th anniversary in 2023.

"Alone and Together (Under the Freeway)" by Chicano artist David Botello, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" by African American sculptor Augusta Savage, and Native American paintings by Bert Geer Phillips will be featured, along with works by Laguna Beach's Roger Kuntz.

Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" is the traditional final presentation of the event.

Tickets for the event, which opens on July 7, 2023 and runs nightly through Sept. 1?

They start at $35. Deciding where you'd like to sit in the spacious outdoor amphitheatre?

That's always a bit of a playful puzzler: Do you sit as close as you can and admire the costuming and make-up of the statue-like performers?

Or further away, which can grant you a fuller sweep of the oversized artwork that's being meticulously staged?

There are surely devotees of both ideas, and many audience members likely love both.

And, quite as surely, there are very few large-scale performances that give you a slightly different experience, depending upon where you are seated. It's one of the pageant's many quirky and beloved attributes.

But the unified and shared feeling, upon leaving a performance, is this: There is nothing quite like the Pageant of the Masters, a stand-still wonder in a zoom-forward time.