Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : THE ARTS : New Performance Center Ushered in With Fanfare

With a blare of trumpets, a parade of high couture, a spate of congratulatory telegrams and, finally, the swoop of conductor Zubin Mehta’s baton, the $70.7-million Orange County Performing Arts Center opened last week, swelling with civic pride and strains of Beethoven.

The gala opening of the 3,000-seat Center ended a decade of work by arts groups and signaled Orange County’s declaration of cultural independence from Los Angeles.

The modernistic, asymmetrical lines of the Center loom over a one-time lima bean field donated to the cause, along with $6 million, by the Segerstrom family. The Center, financed completely by private donations, will be host to orchestras, operas, ballets, and other cultural offerings.

The hall’s premiere showcased the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra--which for years made its Orange County appearances in high school auditoriums--playing a specially commissioned fanfare by Los Angeles composer William Kraft, Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which culminated with a resounding “Ode to Joy” sung by 150 singers. The evening began with the National Anthem, sung by soprano Leontyne Price.

But the celebration began before the music did.

To enthusiastic applause, developer Henry Segerstrom told the opening-night crowd the Center “represents the greatness, individual freedom, ingenuity and enterprise given to our society.”

But a telegram from President Reagan, read by Center President Timothy Strader, drew the loudest response.

“The Performing Arts Center of Orange County is your own in a very real way,” Reagan’s message said. “You have made it possible with your own contributions, and that demonstrates the broad public understanding of the asset such a center represents to the community.”

The opening also was the moment of truth for the hall’s acoustical design, an unusual asymmetrical jumble of shapes and angles designed to envelop the audience in reflections of sound.

The Times’ music critic called the premiere acoustically inconclusive, saying the hall appears to favor the brass and percussion at the expense of the strings and winds, but that the imbalances can be corrected.

Composer Kraft, at intermission, declared the hall “quite resonant,” while conductor Mehta, during an afternoon rehearsal, said, “From where I stand, it sounds wonderful.”

In addition to the auditorium, the Center also has a rehearsal space that doubles as a 300-seat theater, and another theater of 1,000 seats is planned. It forms the cultural nucleus at one end of Costa Mesa’s Town Center Drive with the South Coast Repertory Theatre.

Opening-night patrons, who paid up to $2,000 for tickets, arrived in tuxedos and designer gowns and after the music ended, they continued the celebration across the street at elegant parties beneath oversized tents.

Among the first-nighters were Gloria Deukmejian (Gov. Deukmejian, facing a midnight Tuesday deadline with nearly 200 legislative bills on his desk, had to miss the opening), UC Irvine Chancellor Jack W. Peltason, former U.S. Atty. Gen. William French Smith, and scores of Orange County government and business leaders.