NYCO SIGNS COSTA MESA PACT

The New York City Opera will stage three operas--Bizet’s “Carmen,” Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” and Bernstein’s “Candide”--in January, 1987, at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, it was announced Monday at a press conference in South Coast Plaza attended by City Opera General Director Beverly Sills.

The announcement marks the first official signing of an attraction for the center’s opening season (The 3,000-seat main theater is scheduled to open in October, 1986), and confirms what was widely expected since Sills and center officials started negotiations 10 months ago.

Already announced for the spring of 1987 are three operas by Opera Pacific, a Costa Mesa organization, including a production of Puccini’s “La Boheme,” directed by Gian Carlo Menotti. However, Thomas Kendrick, executive director of the center, said no contract has been signed and negotiations are continuing.

The 13-performance New York City Opera engagement is set to begin Jan. 13, 1987, with “Carmen.”

Sills said that these performances mark the only West Coast appearances by her company in 1987, adding that she still hoped to make the Orange County center her home on the coast.

Sills also said that casting will be announced later.

Originally, New York City Opera and the performing arts center were negotiating for a season that would run anywhere from four to six weeks but settled on the shorter (two-week) engagement, Sills said, because “it’s a situation where you have to walk before you can run.”

Timothy Strader, president of the center board, said that “funds are currently being raised by the board for the City Opera engagement” and that the total cost is “still being determined.”

New York City Opera, founded in 1943, performed exclusively in Manhattan until 1967, when its first visit to Southern California, sponsored by the (Los Angeles) Music Center Opera Assn., took place at the Pavilion of the Music Center.

The company performed 16 consecutive fall seasons in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, through December, 1982, when the Opera Assn. severed the relationship. After 19 years of existence, the Music Center Opera Assn. announced in September that it will mount its own productions, beginning in October, 1986.