Orange County. 1990 The Year in Review : Artistic High Notes and Lows in 1990 : Applause for the arrival of the Irvine Barclay Theatre and Carl St. Clair. The Garden Grove Opera is a different story.

Among the high and low points of 1990 in Orange County’s music and dance circles, a new theater opened, the Pacific Symphony named a new music director, and a new opera company launched itself with a thud.

Though the Irvine Barclay Theatre didn’t open until late September, the very idea of a new concert facility had local tongues wagging all year. Several groups moved programs into the Barclay from various other venues--including the big-kid-on-the-block Orange County Performing Arts Center--hoping to build new audiences and discover more user-friendly acoustics.

Larry Granger’s South Coast Symphony, Micah Levy’s Orange County Chamber Orchestra and Ami Porat’s Mozart Camerata all were among them (though Granger and Porat kept offering some programs in their old halls, at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa and St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church of Newport Beach, respectively). The Orange County Philharmonic Society also found the 750-seat facility a congenial alternative for offering recitals and small ensembles.

An old group--the Irvine Symphony, which had all but disappeared in a cloud of debts--reappeared at the Barclay; a new group--John Elg’s yet-to-be-heard Irvine Chamber Orchestra, aiming to specialize in 20th-Century literature--was spurred into existence. Music ensembles based at UC Irvine also cast their eyes on the facility, which was jointly financed by UCI, the city of Irvine and the private Irvine Operating Company.

The new theater turned out to be acoustically fine and--perhaps even more exciting--it has proved virtually ideal for viewing dance, especially soloists and small ensembles. Human bodies, often dwarfed at the Performing Arts Center, were found to be in perfect proportion for the new stage space: When those bodies moved well, as did the Bella Lewitzky Company in November, the results were dynamite.

What had seemed a good, if optimistic, idea on paper--the formation of a new opera company to explore lesser-known repertory sung by local singers--turned out, when push came to shove, to be a disaster.

Don Hayes’ Garden Grove Opera mounted two low-budget performances of Rossini’s bel canto masterpiece “Semiramide” at the Don Wash Auditorium in February. What went wrong, despite the presence of two bona fide operatic figures, soprano Karon Poston-Sullivan and mezzo Gail Dubinbaum? How do we count the ways. . . ?

A primitive staging scheme in a hand-me-down set, a too-smallish orchestra (a piano had to take over for whole sections that were missing), an ill-prepared, threadbare chorus, a weak supporting cast, the decision to sing the virtually unknown opera in Italian, a language that few in the small audiences could understand. . . .

Reportedly, the company ran up $20,000 in debts. Can it survive? Should it? Stay tuned.

The Pacific Symphony offered cheerier news in February when it named Carl St. Clair, one of two assistant conductors at the Boston Symphony, as its new music director.

The 38-year-old arrived in October and promptly reorganized the seating of the orchestra, placing the violas in front of the cellos on the conductor’s right. He then conducted an impressive pair of concerts, including a work, “Vintage 1990-91,” commissioned for the occasion from William Kraft.

1990 saw a lot of interaction between politics and the arts, most notably in the controversy surrounding the National Endowment for the Arts and its funding of so-called obscene work. Local music and dance groups escaped much direct involvement with all this, though, and avoided taking strong positions pro or con.

Opera Pacific, concerned about an anti-obscenity pledge that grant recipients were being required to sign, spent months considering whether to accept or deny an $18,000 grant. But eventually, it quietly took the money. The Pacific Symphony had accepted a $45,000 NEA grant in June.

On the state level, Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) took umbrage at a California Arts Council advisory panel’s low rating of the Garden Grove Symphony. The orchestra had failed for three years to qualify for a state arts grant because of low ratings. But when Pringle wrote a letter of support to Robert Reid, the top Arts Council figure, the council decided to overrule its advisers and gave the orchestra a minimum state grant of $1,000. Ars brevis, politics longa ?

Other events of note:

* The St. Joseph Ballet in Santa Ana initiated a three-part competition for young artists in May, with the goal of creating of a ballet to be danced by the troupe this spring. Sang Quang Tran, a 16-year-old who came to the United States in 1988 from Vietnam and who now attends Santiago High School in Garden Grove, won the prize for best story. Contests to find the best music and scenic design remain. Company founder Beth Burns will choreograph the work.

* A 17-year-old ambi-instrument soloist, Corey Cerovsek, came to Orange County from Canada, courtesy of the Mozart Camerata’s Porat, to excel at the unusual task of serving as soloist in both Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 and Violin Concerto No. 3.

* The Newport Harbor Art Museum continued to offer programs of new music and experimental works, providing the county with one of the few outlets for serious work by contemporary young and not-so-young composers. Bravo.

* 1990 was another year in which indigenous dance did not blossom, and in which we saw artistic standards decline at New York City Ballet, when the venerated company visited the Performing Arts Center in October and offered some substandard, perfunctory dancing.

* John Alexander’s Pacific Chorale and William Hall’s Master Chorale of Orange County continued to pursue their separate paths after merger talks collapsed in 1988, but one wonders if a merger might be in the offing again. Hall is under consideration for John Currie’s music director’s post with the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Would he stay in Orange County if he gets it? One wonders.

More questions:

* How will the 15-year-old Seal Beach Chamber Music Festival deal with the continuing illness of founding music director Alan Parker?

* Will Orange County audiences continue to maintain their enthusiasm for the arts untempered by critical or consumer standards? People apparently will buy tickets for the ballet series at the Center on the basis of company name alone--and only the vague promise of repertory, much less casting.

Case in point: The Martha Graham Company, due at the Center in January, has dropped three works originally announced (“Embattled Garden,” “Errand into the Maze” and “El Penitente”) in favor of three others (“Maple Leaf Rag,” “Steps in the Street” and “Herodiade”). The question isn’t whether the new works are worthy. But shouldn’t people get what they paid for or expected to see when they laid down their money?

Opera patrons, meanwhile, seem content to buy tickets merely on the basis of works, and appear indifferent to the fact that announced casting on occasion does not materialize. Soviet tenor Vyacheslav Polozov, for instance, was announced for Opera Pacific’s “Aida” in 1988 but withdrew. The company told us that he would be the hero in Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera” in February, but now his name is now missing from the cast, and management has yet to issue an explanation.

Another singer, Florin Georgescu, announced as Pinkerton in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” on Jan. 13 and 18, will be replaced by Hans Gregory Ashbaker. No explanation has been given for that change. The list goes on.

Sure, singers get sick, changes in the opera world occur with all-too-distressing frequency, but isn’t someone on this side of the footlights owed an explanation or two? Is one tenor or soprano as good as another? The forces at Opera Pacific and the public at large apparently think so.

With sadness, we note the deaths of Don Mills, a quiet inspiration in local music, and Michael Kurkjian, an important force for Southland opera and voice.

Mills, the first full-time chairman of the music department at Chapman College in Orange, died of meningitis in February. Kurkjian, who had announced ambitious plans to start a new local opera company when he left Cal State Fullerton earlier this year, died in June.

Hits

* Most Convincing Singer in a Dramatic Role: Diana Soviero brought all-too-rare dramatic credibility to the role--and to opera in general--when she sang Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata” for Opera Pacific at the Center in January. The work was staged, not coincidentally, by Soviero’s husband, Bernard Uzan.

* Best Performance of Last-Minute Program Changes: Carl St. Clair, while auditioning for the Pacific Symphony’s music director position in January, had to deal with last-minute changes in soloist and repertory. He displayed calm mettle in this potentially nerve-wracking situation, bringing Mahler’s “Ruckert Songs” to an ethereal close even though he hadn’t been scheduled to conduct the work at all.

* Most Promising New Turandot: Soprano Ealynn Voss, who supported herself as a housekeeper in Malibu, emerged as a serious contender in the current “Turandot” leather-lung sweepstakes when she sang the role of Puccini’s vindictive, tortured heroine for Opera Pacific in February. Voss has the power, range and sensitivity to make this role her own.

* Greatest Dancing Actress: Alessandra Ferri gave a performance to cherish for a lifetime when she appeared as Juliet in Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet version of “Romeo and Juliet” with American Ballet Theatre at the Center in March. Ferri (who astonishingly was not part of the opening night cast) demonstrated not only exemplary technique but projected a vivid, deeply felt characterization. Unfortunately, Julio Bocca, her Romeo, though justly admired for virtuosity, failed to exhibit a clue about inhabiting his character.

- Most Exciting New Choreography: Choreographer Twyla Tharp’s “Brief Fling,” her latest work for ABT, was unveiled to the Southland at the Center in March. A showpiece for Bocca and Cheryl Yeager, and an amazing workout for the company, the work juxtaposes ballet and modern dance movements and aims for a synthesis that perhaps never achieves consummation, but nonetheless dazzles.

* Most Impressive Male Recitalist: Baritone Thomas Hampson sang model Schubert, Schuman and Mahler in April at the Center, where he’d been invited by the Philharmonic Society.

* Most Electrifying Soloist Doubling as Conductor: Leon Fleisher served as both conductor and soloist when he led the Pacific Symphony in an unforgettable account of Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand at the Center in May. Fleisher’s brilliant career as a virtuoso poet of the keyboard had been tragically derailed when his right hand became disabled in 1965. Those who heard him in this work had a sense of what was lost--and what fortunately has been retained.

* Grandest Comedy, Kabuki-Style: The Grand Kabuki Theatre of Japan brought two classic comedies to the Performing Arts Center at the end of June: “Narukami” (The Thunder God), a bawdy tale of the seduction of a venerable but vulnerable priest, and the farcical “Migawari Zazen” (the Substitute Meditator).

* Best New Production of Gilbert and Sullivan: The reconstituted D’Oyly Carte Opera Company of Great Britain came to the Center in October to make its first U.S. appearances since reorganizing in 1988. After a conservative staging of “The Mikado,” the company delighted with a zany, creative and alert production of “The Pirates of Penzance” staged by Keith Warner, designed by Marie Jeanne Lecca and choreographed by Anthony van Laast.

* Best Modern Dance Choreography, Newly Commissioned: UC Irvine commissioned a work from modern dance doyenne Bella Lewitzky, “Episode 1: Recuerdo,” which had its first performances by her company at the Irvine Barclay Theatre in November, proving that the septuagenarian choreographer remains a vital force in modern dance.

Misses

* Worse Stage Direction, Mozart Opera Category: John Pascoe matched the dreary, murky costume and set designs he’d created for Bellini’s “Norma” for Opera Pacific in 1989 with a sleazy staging of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” for the same troupe in February. Among other crudities, Pascoe presented half-naked penitents flagellating themselves around a statue of the Virgin Mary during the Overture, brought back the statue in the damnation scene, and cut the epilogue, citing a staging in Mozart’s day as a dubious precedent.

* Least Interesting New Choreography, Major Company Category: Peter Martins’ recent “Fearful Symmetries” (set to music by John Adams), seen during the October engagement of the New York City Ballet at the Center, proved that the hectic, unmusical choreography he created in “Ecstatic Orange” was no fluke.

* White-Bread Award: To the forces that brought Orange County the “Festival of Great Britain,” a combination retail promotion and arts festival co-sponsored by South Coast Plaza, while Los Angeles was celebrating its diverse heritage through a disorganized, sprawling, sometimes wonderful festival of world cultures.