THE CENTER : <i> A Year of Discovery </i> : A GLAMOROUS STOPPING PLACE : Performers Find Arts Center Nice Place to Visit, But Would They Want to Live There?

Looking back after a year, without the aid of rose-colored glasses . . .

Segerstrom Hall is beautiful, architecturally adventurous, opulent, reasonably unctional. The sight lines are terrific. The place is inviting, even comfortable. The Fire Bird sculpture, blazing through the glass on the upper-foyer balcony, is a nice symbol.

Orange County is lucky. Costa Mesa has come of cultural age.

Complaints? Of course.

One can complain that the pervasive ketchup hue inside the auditorium becomes a bit oppressive, even cloying, after a while. One can also gripe about the absence of center aisles. Continental seating be damned.

One can worry about acoustics that are brilliant for one seat, fuzzy for another, better in general for symphony than for opera. One can gripe about an amplification system that seems primitive and is clumsily used--probably overused--for musical comedy and some opera.

One can register bemusement at the absence of certain creature comforts, such as a cup of coffee or a sandwich--or even a Life Saver--for sale on the premises. A restroom downstairs would have been nice, too.

If pressed, one can admit to a twinge of anxiety about an audience that sometimes seems more interested in self-congratulation than in art.

Still, a crucial start has been made. Promising seeds have been planted.

There are many happy memories. Zubin Mehta and his erstwhile orchestra may not have made optimally beautiful music together at the grand opening. The sheer euphoria of that momentous event, however, proved far more important than prosaic Beethoven.

As the season wore on, the quality of the performance frequently matched the quality of the occasion. With Kurt Sanderling as sensitive guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orange County was treated to an object lesson in mellow romanticism. The Center audience heard another world-class concert when Sir Georg Solti stopped by with the wondrous Chicago Symphony.

The New York City Ballet, led by Peter Martins, preached the gospel according to Balanchine with extraordinary conviction and dedication.

Not everything, alas, was so poignant. American Ballet Theatre, limited to a creaky series of pre-Christmas “Nutcrackers,” stumbled when it might have soared.

The New York City Opera put some of its worst productions--and voices--forward with a gimmicky “Carmen” staged by Frank Corsaro, a faded “Madama Butterfly” and an alarmingly fatuous version of Bernstein’s “Candide.”

The newly formed Opera Pacific, less than generously funded, made a cautious debut with an excellent “Porgy and Bess” road company from Houston. The staging of “West Side Story” that followed would have looked and sounded more at home in summer stock. This Broadway-oriented project did little, moreover, to validate the organization’s operatic intentions and pretensions.

Finally came a virtually foolproof “La Boheme” directed by Gian Carlo Menotti. Those who like their Puccini trite, grand and old-fashioned had to be happy.

Even the heroic majesty of Leontyne Price could not convince aficionados that the 3,000-seat theater was an ideal locale for an intimate recital. Undaunted, the Orange County Philharmonic Society, which had served the muse with distinction long before anyone entertained the foggiest hope of a local music center, sponsored stimulating, sophisticated concerts on a somewhat larger scale.

In general, the inaugural season was hardly more erratic than that of many another arts emporium or high-class booking house.

High-class booking house . . . there’s the rub.

The Orange County Performing Arts Center is, thus far, little more than a glamorous stopping place for glamorous itinerants. It isn’t the home of a first-rate orchestra. It doesn’t have a ballet company to call its own. It lends only token support to a struggling quasi-opera company.

The reasons for these limits may involve meager finances. They may involve conscious policy decisions. They may involve ordinary growth problems.

Be that as it may, the choice of what will and what won’t be presented here has seemed almost arbitrary. Decisions have often appeared to depend on nothing more complex than a travel schedule. What is available? Who is passing through town? Is the date open?

It would be nice if the resident impresarios could reveal a stronger, perhaps more daring, creative profile. It would be gratifying if standards did not fluctuate so wildly from night to night.

It would be useful if a great conductor and a really worthy orchestra could live here, test the hall on a regular basis and be empowered to make the inevitable adjustments.

It would be reassuring, too, if this $70.7-million showplace were kept open all year long. The summer has been long, mostly dark, and disappointing.

In Act Two of Wagner’s “Tannhauser,” the saintly Elisabeth bursts into a minstrel arena that compares in some ways to the local one. Rapturously, she greets the lofty setting: “Dich, teure Halle.”

Her apostrophe, if applied to Orange County, might be ambiguous. “Teure Halle” could mean “cherished hall.” On a more prosaic level, however, it could just mean “expensive hall.”

Perhaps the second year will tell us which the Performing Arts Center really is.

HITS

Kurt Sanderling and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Oct. 19, 1986.

Sir Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony, Feb. 2, 1987.

The New York City Ballet, Oct. 15-19, 1986.

MISSES

The American Ballet Theatre, Dec. 9-14, 1986.

The New York City Opera, Jan. 13-25, 1987.