SAINT-SAENS’ ‘CARNIVAL’ POPS UP IN TWO GUISES

Saint-Saens’ ingenious “Carnival of the Animals”--subtitled a “grand zoological fantasy”--shows up twice this weekend in different guises:

A ballet adaptation will be danced by Ballet Pacifica at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday at the Festival Forum Theatre on the Festival of Arts grounds in Laguna Beach.

A straight concert version will be given by duo-pianists Pinio Dovalis-Miner and David Michael Kennedy with the Garden Grove Symphony directed by Edward Peterson at 8 p.m. on Saturday in the Don Wash Auditorium in Garden Grove. Thurl Ravenscroft will narrate the Ogden Nash poems introducing each movement.

Saint-Saens would have been dismayed by the popularity of the work.

He composed “Carnival of the Animals” in 1886 as a private joke while he was vacationing. Fearing harm to his reputation as a serious composer, however, he forbade performances of it during his lifetime.

Ironically, “Carnival” has become his most famous composition.

The 13th movement, “Le Cygne” (The Swan), in particular, was known round the world thanks to choreographer Michel Fokine using the music for a short piece he created in 1905 for Anna Pavlova: The result, Fokine’s “The Dying Swan,” became Pavlova’s signature work and a synonym of ballet virtually everywhere.

So there is precedent for linking the music to the dance.

Saint-Saens concealed--and not all that deeply--within the warm, comic portraits of the various animals affectionate parodies of the music of Offenbach, Berlioz, Mendelssohn and Rossini, as well as of several popular songs of his day.

He also poked fun at his own “Dance macabre”--and satirized the oddest animals of them all in section 11--virtuoso pianists:

Saint-Saens could get away with the joke. He was a formidable virtuoso at the instrument (he wrote five concertos for it). He also reportedly was a master in the finely wrought concertos of Mozart as well.

Saint-Saens ventured two scorings for the work: for two pianos and a small grup of strings, winds and percussion, and for two pianos and orchestra.

Narrators were to come later. . . .

The Ballet Pacific version of “The Carnival” was choreographed by Kathy Kahn, former ballet mistress with the company.

Also on the Ballet Pacifica’s programs (part of the “Ballet for Children” series) are David Pearson’s “Normal Cycle” (set to original music by Starlight) and Corinne Calamaro’s “Pinocchio” (to an assembled score), with storyteller Douglas Reed as narrator. For further information, call (714) 494-7271.

In addition to the Saint-Saens music, Edward Peterson will lead the Garden Grove Symphony in Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” and Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos with soloists Dovalis-Miner and Kennedy. The theme of the concert is “Pictures in Music.”

An exhibition of children’s drawings is scheduled to be displayed in the lobby of the Don Wash Auditorium. For further information, call (714) 534-7271.

Other arts-related events coming up are:

Beverly Sills, general director of the New York City Opera, will give the first in a series of four Town Hall lectures at 10:30 a.m. on Monday at the Edwards Theater in Newport Center in Newport Beach.

The famed soprano will trace her life and career from her early days in Brooklyn through her major successes in the opera houses of Europe and America to her present administrative duties at City Opera.

The series is sponsored by the Assistance Leagues of Laguna Beach and Newport Beach. Series tickets are $45. Individual tickets for Sills’ talk are $15; single tickets for the other speakers are $12. For further information, call (714) 497-1373.

Joseph Alfuso will conduct the Crystal Cathedral Symphony in Strauss’ “On the Beautiful Blue Danube” waltz, excerpts from Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances and selections from Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” and Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” plus spiritual and inspirational selections at 8:15 tonight in the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove. For further information, call (714) 971-4017.

Ami Porat and the Mozart Camerata will celebrate Mozart’s 231st birthday three days early with an all-Mozart program at 8 p.m. on Saturday at Santa Ana High School Auditorium.

The program will include Mozart’s Concerto for Flute in D, K. 314 (with soloist Susan Fries), the Symphony No. 21 in A, K. 134, and the Divertimento in B-flat, K. 159.

A late addition to the program: violinist Wei Fan Gu in his local debut playing the Allegro movement of the Violin Concerto No. 4.

Serious music and humor will share the stage when members of the Hambro Quartet of Pianos perform at 8 p.m. on Saturday at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. Quartet members will play works by Beethoven, Brahms, Saint-Saens, Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein, plus their own arrangements of Leroy Anderson’s “The Typewriter” and “The Syncopated Clock.”

The quartet consists of director Leonid Hambro, head of the piano department at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia; Thaddeus Wolfe, a native of Southern California; Bin Wang, a native of China and graduate of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and Cal Arts, and Yoon-Sung Shin, born in Korea and winner of several California-based competitions. They play on four grand pianos.