The Opera Season Opens With Performance On and Off Stage

The San Diego Opera inaugurated its 1987-88 season Saturday with an engaging double bill that entertained some of its supporters right through to the following morning.

The program opened at the Civic Theatre with an engrossing performance of Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” and continued across the street with “Weekend at the Westgate,” a giddy bedroom farce in three acts scripted and directed by Dorene Whitney.

The evening was one of those modern productions that demanded audience participation, not especially of the crowd at the Civic Theatre, but very much of the 300 or so who stayed on to attend the second half of the bill at the Westgate Hotel. These roles required several wardrobe changes, as well as the ability to stay up very late without yawning indiscreetly or showing other unseemly signs of fatigue.

Given as a reprise of the very successful gala held last year, and billed simply as “The Season Opening Night Celebration,” the Westgate romp offered patrons (who paid a handsome $675 per couple for their fun) 18 hours of festivities, adventure and rest. By offering an evening that began with pre-theater champagne and continued with a midnight supper, dancing past 2 a.m., a deluxe bedroom and a lazy Sunday brunch, the Opera added a tidy $100,000 to its coffers.

Gala chairman Whitney, who repeated the role she played in 1986, said that her chief desire in staging the event was to establish an Opera tradition. Crafting a tradition meant investing the party with a certain grandeur, a Whitney specialty that was helped along by such serendipitous details as the fact that the date coincided with the 174th anniversary of composer Verdi’s birth. (At the end of the meal, candle-laden cakes were carved and served to the strains of “Happy Birthday,” a particular thrill for those guests who never had felt any special closeness with a composer of note. Or notes, for that matter.)

‘Biggest Artistic Pajama Party’

Opera director Ian Campbell took an entirely pleased view of the proceedings, which helped his company to remain one of the relatively few local performing arts groups to operate in the black.

“This sleep-over is the biggest artistic pajama party in San Diego,” Campbell said, smiling broadly and adding: “These are the people you’ve always wanted to see in pajamas.”

Of course, the guests didn’t wear their jammies during the festivities, although a future party planner might consider the option as a rather breezy way of launching a truly different tradition. And a survey of potential sleep accouterments brought along by the guests failed to turn up a single teddy bear; in fact, when asked what special necessities they had brought for their overnight stay, most husbands (the wiser ones, anyway) responded, “My wife.”

In any case, sleep was but a reward for a long evening of entertainment both sybaritic and tragic. Since dinner would not commence until nearly 11 p.m., Whitney arranged for heavy hors d’oeuvres during the pre-performance reception. (Given the “Rigoletto” story line, which is just about as tragic as opera gets, the evening followed the plot rather nicely by beginning mirthfully, reaching a dramatic climax at the end of the performance, and then continuing with a celebration that nicely banished the opera’s heavier themes.)

The moment of return to the hotel was marked by an almost Graustarkian gesture: Guests found the grand staircase flanked from bottom to top by servers bearing trays of champagne, and ascended as liveried trumpeters blasted out the grand march from “Aida.”

More Fanfares

Both the Versailles ballroom and the Fontainebleau dining room were used for the gala, and it took little enough time for the guests to settle in at the pampas grass-centered tables for a dinner of pasta alla putanesca (literally “harlot’s pasta,” a cold dish of tortellini with olives and a spicy tomato sauce), roast veal and the special Verdi cake.

Early in the meal, further trumpet fanfares announced the arrival of “Rigoletto” principals, who showed not the least reluctance to tuck into the meal. Among these were title performer John Rawnsley, soprano Hei-Kyung Hong and tenor Diego D’Auria. (Baritone Jeffrey Wells, a Baton Rouge native who sang the role of the assassin, Sparafucile, mentioned that he had been a Creole chef before he took to the stage; earlier in the day, he cooked up a batch of red beans and rice for himself and his wife, Jo Ellen, as a snack.)

Among those who trundled their toothbrushes to the Westgate were Barbara and Neil Kjos, John Whitney, Opera President Esther Burnham, Lee and P.J. Maturo, Patricia and Bob Lijewski, Renee and Bill Jenkins, Pat and Hugh Carter, Lee and Frank Goldberg, Eleanor and Art Herzman, Athena and Charles May, Lollie and Bill Nelson, Wanda and Fred Kaufman, Sandra and Doug Pay, Vicki and Haley Rogers, Carol and Bob Tuggey, Kay and Bill Rippee, Georgette and Jack McGregor, and Kay and Donald Stone.

LA JOLLA--It had to happen sooner or later.

Just when this quiet seaside neighborhood thought it was safe to go out shopping, it instead found itself caught up in a first-ever grocery store dance. Thursday, the St. Germaine Auxiliary to the Child Abuse Prevention Foundation mounted “Lettuce Entertain You” at the upscale Jonathan’s market, and 400 auxiliary supporters and thrill-seekers turned out to frolic amid the canned goods and to learn that vegetables can be fun .

In explaining the genesis of the event, chairman Nancy Hester said: “We’re making money in a way that’s never been done before. We like to be unique.”

This quest for the unique led to such entertainments as the Dancing Lettuces, a pair of ravishing Romaines (dancers Rhonda Morris and Sandy Blakely) who tap-danced provocatively to the strains of “In the Mood” and “Let Me Entertain You.” (Hester had hoped to get the California Dancing Raisins for the benefit, but opted for the home-grown Lettuces when the Raisins proved to be bound for greener produce sections. It all sounds rather silly, but it raised more than $8,000 for child abuse prevention.)

Raucous Rutabagas

The evening previewed Jonathan’s two-day gourmet festival, which filled the store’s parking lot with purveyors of fancy foods--their free samples added up to a rather filling movable feast--and the store itself with working representatives of several of the county’s better restaurant kitchens.

As guests moved through displays of raucous rutabagas and yammering yams, they stopped to sample cannelloni dished up by the Manhattan restaurant’s P.J. Mancaluso, and confit of duck sent down from Vincent Grumel’s Encinitas kitchen. Quite a number of guests wrapped up the evening, which also included performances by cafe society pianist Barry Levich and one-man-band Ira Cobb, by commandeering grocery carts and scooping up a few household necessities. Jonathan’s, owned by Big Bear proprietors and child abuse prevention benefactors John and Betty Mabee, donated 10% of the evening’s cash register receipts to the benefit.

The party committee included Elizabeth Nichol, Martha Houshar, Barbara Murfey, Vicki Eddy, Mary Tatum, Ann Williams, Carol Vidstrand, Sally Irwin, Lisa Hill, Tracy Nelson, Omar Keith, Vonnie Mellon, Lynn Kuerbis and Patty Russell.

RANCHO SANTA FE--The Museum of Man, traditionally one of the quieter members of Balboa Park’s museum row, announced plans for a splashier future at its President’s Associates dinner dance Friday, given for some 80 guests on the terrace of Luba Johnston’s Rancho del Lago estate.

Museum President Barbara Malone greeted arriving guests with the news that the day’s mail had brought a check for more than $150,000 from El Paso Natural Gas, a sum that will be used to renovate the first of several galleries scheduled for major overhauls. She also announced the receipt of an even larger sum from the state, which will assist the museum in renovating the neighboring, and crumbling, Irving Gill building that guards the Laurel Street entrance to the park.

Museum director Doug Sharon said that the institution has been quietly plotting a major expansion program for the past six years. “We’ve been planning and building slowly, but the next year will see a quantum leap in our progress,” he said. “Our new gallery will open May 5 with the Rockefeller Folk Art Exhibit, which is a real coup for us, since other institutions really wanted to show it but never had a shot at it when the curators saw what we had to offer.”

Trustee Honored

The event specifically honored Willis “Wig” Fletcher, a member of the old-line Fletcher clan and an eight-year museum trustee whom Sharon described as “the most active and best trustee we’ve ever had.” On hand to applaud the honoree were several family members, including Fletcher’s wife, Jane; banker Kim Fletcher and his wife, Marilyn, and Steve and Louise Fletcher.

Guests dined by starlight on roast duck in raspberry sauce and dressy French cake, and then rose to ward off the evening’s chill by dancing to Doc’s Prescription.

Among the guests were Ronald and Mary Ann Blair, Maurice and Charmaine Kaplan, Ken and Fran Golden, Kenneth and Dorothy Hill, Norman and Angelina Roberts, Dolly Maw, Ben and Cherie Kelts, George and Edith Rigby, Roelif and Sue Randerson, Charles Taubman, Mason and Marion Freeman, Rea and Lela Axline and Grayson Boehm with Rick Mueller.