The National Opera’s Fall Season Starts Early

With the opening, three days ago, of the New York City Opera season--135 performances in the State Theater at Lincoln Center through Nov. 19--the 1989-90 opera year is launched.

Staged by Harold Prince and conducted by Sergiu Comissiona, a new production of “Don Giovanni” was scheduled to open the NYCO series Thursday with John Cheek in the title role (his first outing as Mozart’s debauched hero) and Elizabeth Holleque, Frances Ginsberg, Erie Mills, Jon Garrison and Jan Opalach among his colleagues.

According to the schedule, the year-old Lotfi Mansouri staging of “Barbiere di Siviglia” followed on Friday, with “Rigoletto” and “Merry Widow” being revived at the matinee and evening performances on Saturday. “Madama Butterfly” returns to Lincoln Center today at 4. In all, 19 productions of 20 operas (one of the new production is a double bill of Ravel operas) will be seen in this summer/fall season.

In Los Angeles, Music Center Opera opens its fourth season with Puccini’s “Tosca” (with Maria Ewing, Neil Shicoff and Justino Diaz), Sept. 6, followed by Weill and Brecht’s “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” (staged by Jonathan Miller), Sept. 10. The season continues in January, with Mozart’s “Nozze di Figaro.”

San Francisco Opera opens its fall season, Sept. 8, performances continuing through Dec. 10 in War Memorial Opera House. Kazimierz Kord conducts the opening night “Falstaff,” a revival of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s production. In the cast are Thomas Stewart, Pilar Lorengar, Meg Cowdrick, Marilyn Horne, Ruth Ann Swenson, J. Patrick Raftery and John David De Haan.

A new production of the three-act version of Berg’s “Lulu,” with Ann Panagulias in the title role, follows, Sept. 9. Among the other eight operas in the season are a new “Mefistofele,” with Samuel Ramey and Gabriela Benackova, Verdi’s “Otello,” Vivaldi’s “Orlando Furioso” and a new production of Mozart’s “Idomeneo.”

At Lyric Opera of Chicago, the season opens Sept. 16, with a “Tosca” starring Eva Marton, Luciano Pavarotti and Sigmund Nimsgern; the conductor is Lyric Opera’s artistic director, Bruno Bartoletti.

The other seven operas in this 35th anniversary season (ending Feb. 3) are “Der Rosenkavalier,” “La Clemenza di Tito,” “Samson et Dalila” (with Agnes Baltsa and Placido Domingo), “Don Carlo,” “Barbiere di Siviglia,” “Die Fledermaus” and “Hamlet.” Besides Bartoletti, the conductors are Jiri Kout, Andrew Davis, James Conlon, Alessandro Pinzauti and Julius Rudel.

Back in New York, the Metropolitan Opera opens its doors with Verdi’s “Aida” (Aprile Millo in the title role), Sept. 25. The 32-week season offers five new productions: “Don Giovanni,” “Faust,” “Der Fliegende Hollander,” “Rigoletto” and “Traviata.” The company will also present three complete cycles of Wagner’s “Ring des Nibelungen” tetralogy.

Revivals (works absent from the repertory for one or more seasons) are: “Les Contes d’Hoffmann,” “Cosi fan Tutte,” “Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail,” “Die Frau ohne Schatten,” “La Gioconda,” “Manon Lescaut,” “Il Trittico,” “Turandot,” “Otello,” “Porgy and Bess,” “Samson et Dalila” and “Wozzeck.”

The new “Rigoletto” will be sung by Leo Nucci, June Anderson (her Met debut) and Luciano Pavarotti, among others. Marcello Panni will conduct. Charles Dutoit will conduct, and Harold Prince will stage, the new “Faust,” the cast to include Carol Vaness, Neil Shicoff and James Morris. Besides Anderson, debutant singers include Susan Dunn, Alessandra Marc, Ashley Putnam, Marjana Lipovsek and Richard Leech.

The San Diego Opera season--its 25th--begins Oct. 21 with the first of five performances of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov,” with Alexander Morozov from the Kirov Opera in the title role. Four other Soviet singers--Irina Bogacheva, Gia Asatiana, Omar Khoperia and Teimuraz Gugushvili--are also in the cast. Jansoug Kakhidze will conduct; Nathaniel Merrill will be the stage director. The season continues in January with “La Boheme”.

CONDUCTOR-WATCH: Marin Alsop, 32, has been named music director of the Eugene (Oregon) Symphony. Alsop has also recently been appointed associate conductor of the Richmond (Va.) Symphony. In addition, Alsop will continue to head Concordia, the New York-based, combined jazz and classical chamber orchestra she founded . . . Under a new agreement, Riccardo Muti’s contract as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra has been extended indefinitely: Muti’s present contract runs through 1991-92, and will automatically be renewed by mutual agreement annually.