I agree there should be adequate and well engineered egress. I looked at some pics, the building is sprinklered in the renovated areas, but the hallways are small for egress of a mass of people for sure. L shaped egress hallways are terrible.

The main opera hall is not sprinklered from what I can tell, not sure how tall it is either, that effects the efficacy of a sprinkler system. I'm still not sold on it being a death trap, that's hyperbolic.

If there is a very dirty burning acoustic foam all over the hall, yeah, that would kill folks very quickly if the smoke banked down fast enough which is very possible with burning acoustic foams. I'm not sold that the Lyric has that kind of cladding in the hall though.

There's a big difference in compartment space when comparing a music hall to a night club, same with fire load. Both those factors will greatly effect the speed and spread of fire growth. I believe the Lyric is non-combustible construction. It may only be sprinkled in certain areas for acoustics, I'm not sure however, never looked to see sprinkler hookups outside.

Was the building standpiped?

When you giggle to yourself that Go Juice could fuel vehicles and then science winks and asks you to hold their coffee.

I came to say the exact same thing.