St. Paul’s Ordway Center for the Performing Arts has tapped a native Californian with longstanding ties to Minnesota to be its new chief executive. “Patricia Mitchell’s first job out of college was at the [Minneapolis-based] Guthrie Theater,” and she went on to head opera companies in LA and San Francisco, and to serve as COO of the LA Philharmonic. In St. Paul, she will take over a venue with a long history of difficult relations with its resident companies.