ANNA RUSSELL LEAVES OPERA LESS DULL

This, we have been assured, will be “the ultimate farewell tour,” the very last time--absolutely the final chance--to see and hear that paradigm of operatic and musical satire, Anna Russell. That “Bruennhilde of musical mockery,” as Times music critic Martin Bernheimer has affectionately dubbed her, has begun her swan song. Sniffles, please.

Russell will appear in San Diego at 8 p.m. Nov. 7 through 10 at the Old Globe Theatre in four recitals sponsored by the San Diego Opera.

Russell, a septuagenarian, made her reputation by letting the air out of overblown musical traditions. Russell has become famous for making Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” cycle of operas understandable. In the Russell lexicon, Valhalla becomes “a sort of celestial White House,” while the Valkyries are “the noisiest people. They’re all of them virgins, and I’m not the least bit surprised.”

Whether giving us confidential tips on “How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta” or “How to Play the Bagpipes,” Russell offers a comedic slant in a musical world where stuffy pretension is often the rule.

Most of the tickets for Russell’s final three performances already have been sold, according to an opera spokeswoman, although tickets for the Nov. 7 recital, at $20, are still available. Fans are cautioned that this is absolutely the last opportunity to hear the uncommon contralto. No more return engagements, ever . . . maybe.

ALLIGATOR TAILS: He arrives in tuxedo and bare feet, then beguiles and delights audiences with his down-home tales of the Gothic and antediluvian South. Last summer Jan Munroe’s narrative recollections of his family history, replete with swamps, alligators, Spanish moss, cottonmouths and tragic Old South honor, were a hit at Sushi’s Del Mar extension series. Munroe returns for a four-day set of his “Alligator Tails” plus a short work, “Notes: On Performance II,” at 8 p.m. Nov. 7-10 at Sushi, 852 8th Ave.

Munroe conjures an array of Deep South characters, using the traditional storyteller’s skills and the physical gestures he learned at the feet of such master mimes as Marcel Marceau and Etienne Decroux. Tickets are $7.

CRITICS’ CHOICE: In taking seven of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Awards, presented Sunday night, the La Jolla Playhouse’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s “A Man’s a Man” completely stole the thunder from two of the playhouse’s own productions. Neither Anton Chekhov’s “The Sea Gull” nor the musical “Merrily We Roll Along” by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, which had 10 nominations between them, received a single award.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night was 31-year-old Douglas Wieselman’s award for new score. The Los Angeles native who is touring with the Kamikaze Ground Crew band (the pit band for the Flying Karamazov Brothers entertainment act) beat out, among others, superstar composer Sondheim. Wieselman won the 1983 Joseph Jefferson Award in Chicago for his score to the Goodman Theatre’s staging of “A Comedy of Errors.”

Notably absent from the Critics Circle ceremonies were representatives of the Old Globe Theatre, which took three awards.

MUSICAL WEEK: True to the word from its staff, the San Diego Symphony Assn. is making the new Symphony Hall available for a diversity of events, from the start. Following immediately on the heels of the gala goings-on Saturday night will be two Sunday events in the former Fox Theatre. A free concert for the community is on tap at 2:30 p.m. (All seats were filled within 48 hours of the announcement.) That program consists of chestnuts such as Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to “Candide,” Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade,” Faure’s “Pavane,” Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” and “The Nutcracker” suite by Tchaikovsky.

Then at 8 p.m. Sunday, pianist Gustavo Romero will give a recital. Winner of the Avery Fisher Young Artist Career Grant in 1983 and the Gina Bachauer Memorial Competition at Juilliard, Romero will play a program of music by Mozart, Chopin, Alban Berg and Maurice Ravel.

A classical concert by two jazz musicians, keyboardist Bob James and flutist Alexander Zonjic, to be presented by the Old Globe Theatre, is set for 8 p.m. next Wednesday at Symphony Hall. The program will include music by Bach, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Francis Poulenc, Bartok and Villa-Lobos, and two compositions by James--”Chicago Encounter” and “Spunkata.”

The symphony will also play a concert at the Centro Cultural in Tijuana to benefit the Mexican Red Cross. That will be at 8 p.m. on Tuesday. Then at 7 p.m. on Nov. 7, the orchestra opens its regular season at Symphony Hall with the world premiere of “Ceremonial for Orchestra” by Bernard Rands, composer in residence.

BALBOA THEATRE: The Nederlander Organization; the San Diego Civic Light Opera, which produces Starlight, and developer Terry Nash are about to get into bed with a proposal that all parties hope will save the historic Balboa Theatre. However, a news story published Monday about the plan was “premature,” according to Stan Seiden, the head of Nederlander’s West Coast operations. “We’ve had a conversation. We have agreed to agree,” Seiden said by telephone from his Los Angeles office.

The San Diego City Council has already reached an agreement with the San Diego Art Center, which plans to gut the Balboa Theatre, which stands next to the Horton Plaza shopping center, and turn it into a modern art museum. Nash, the driving force in the project, attracted attention earlier this year when he persuaded the City Council to reverse its plan to condemn one of his downtown developments.

Nash said that, once he receives the Nederlander commitment to the deal, he will present to the City Council his plan to restore and use the theater. Nash said his proposal would cost a maximum of $3 million. The Art Center’s plan to restore the exterior and rebuild the interior carries a $5-million price tag.

ARTBEATS: San Diego artist Manny Farber will be honored with a one-man 10-year survey exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles beginning Saturday and continuing through Feb. 11. . . .

Fans of local writer-performer Philip-Dimitri Galas can hear his frenetic prose in a new “solo play,” written for actor Sean Sullivan, if they journey to Los Angeles. Sullivan will perform “Baby Redboots’ Revenge” at the Richmond Shepard Theatre Studios there beginning Saturday.