Curtain Is Going Up on Opera’s 5th Season

Fall means opera, the official opening of the September social season. Peggy Parker-Grauman and Jennifer Diener host a kickoff committee meeting at a luncheon Tuesday at Patina on Melrose.

The fifth season of the Los Angeles Music Center Opera opens Sept. 4 with the gala benefit premiere of Beethoven’s only opera, “Fidelio.” Parker-Grauman and her husband, Walter Grauman, are chairing the evening and Jennifer and Royce Diener are co-chairmen. They hope for a moonlit post-performance party on the Music Center Plaza.

Merrill Lynch underwrites both the opening-night performance and the gala. That means all proceeds from the $650-a-person event can go to the opera company.

The executive committee includes Deborah and Tom Tellefsen, Katherine and Arpad Domyan, Ginny and Henry Mancini, Anne and Franklin Johnson, Carol and Warner Henry, Susana and Peter Funsten, Kathy and Bob Ray Offenhauser, Annette and Peter O’Malley, Lenore and Bernard Greenberg, Georgia Frontiere, Rosanna Hill and Jim Gigans.

On the committee are Joan Hotchkis, Kathryn Klinger Belton, Hannah Carter, Alice Coulombe, Suzanne Rheinstein, Paulette Ziffren, Barbara Davis, Flora Thornton, Terri Childs, Jinny Geller, Enid Koffler, Winnie Schweitzer and many more.

CATCH-UP: At the recent Nixon gala at the Century Plaza, there were travel asides. Former First Daughter Tricia Nixon Cox and her son, Christopher, had been invited to the White House earlier in the week. The story circulated that they wished to take a gift to the White House, and that Christopher decided it should be for First Dog Millie. Millie was routed from the Oval Office and received her present--not specified--in the family quarters where Tricia once lived. They flew to California on Air Force One for the gala.

Julie and David Eisenhower and their three children were house guests after the gala at the St. Malo enclave in Oceanside, invited by Craig and Jane Gosden. Craig Gosden was an usher in the Eisenhower wedding and an assistant to John Ehrlichman, assistant to Nixon for domestic affairs.

UPSCALE: Long Ellis, Robert J. Kelleher, Jack Kramer, Gerald L. Parsky and former U.S. Atty. Gen. William French Smith form the International Tennis Hall of Fame committee hosting Tennis Hall of Famers Alice Marble and Ellsworth Vines Aug. 2. They plan cocktails and a buffet dinner followed by a Night of Tennis at the Volvo Tennis/Los Angeles James E. West Center at UCLA. Proceeds will benefit the Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I.

THE WHIRL: Altovise Davis, widow of Sammy Davis Jr., plans to join Helen Harris, president of Retinitis Pigmentosa International at the Charity Awards Dinner Tuesday in Washington. The party will center around “Forgotten Eyes,” the last recording Davis made. He also was co-host of the “Hope in Sight Telethon” for four years. Harris will receive the Presidential Award. Songwriter Carol Connors will also be honored.

WITH LOVE: The Commons in Pasadena will sport continental jazz with the Jake Porter Band and gourmet fare for Hospice de Beaune at a benefit this evening for hospice programs in the West San Gabriel Valley. Behind the event is a dedicated lot, including Thomas D. Mone, Barbara Steinwedell, Ginny and Dick Stever, Anne and Bob Wycoff, Toni and Bob Niven.

KUDOS: To John E. Anderson, new president of the UCLA Foundation . . . .

To Dr. Tom Rockwell, new trustee of the National Museum of Health and Medicine Foundation . . . .

To the Most Rev. John J. Ward and Vivian Minovich, honored by Catholic Charities at Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel.

PAST PERFECT: More than 350 were there to unveil SPRINT’s (Special Preventive Research, Intervention and New Technology) 15,000-square-foot facility at the new UCLA Medical Plaza building. At the festivities were president and co-founder Nina Leif, Dr. Barbara Crandall, Dr. Kenneth Shine (dean of UCLA School of Medicine) and Leif’s daughter, Marisa, 16, telling of help from SPRINT doctors . . . .

Michael and Marilyn Diamond celebrated the Legal Aid Foundation at a cocktail party . . . . Judy Ovitz’s and Garry Sato’s North Beach Bar & Grill was the site for fund raising for the Foundation of Saint John’s Hospital.