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White Gets a Vowel--Oooooh--at Party

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Spin the wheel, then fill in the missing letters: V--nn-- W--it--.

That’s right, Vanna White, star of television’s “Wheel of Fortune” and most recently, star of a very private dinner party held at the Center Club in Costa Mesa.

The scene: the art-bedecked Chairman’s Room where Orange County Performing Arts Center bigwigs schmooze with major donors before attending performances at Segerstrom Hall.

Last week, the dinner host was Opera Pacific philanthropist Richard Engel, the performance was Verdi’s “A Masked Ball,” and the guest list was a powerhouse.

For starters, there was Center Chairman Gen. William Lyon with his wife, Willa Dean (stunning in diamonds and black sequins) and L.A. Rams owner Georgia Frontiere (equally stunning in diamonds and blue sequins). And there was Harry Reinsch, a top gun at Bechtel; Center President Thomas Kendrick; Center General Manager Judy Morr, and David DiChiera, general director of Opera Pacific.

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White stole the show.

Sweeping into the black-tie affair wearing low-cut blue velvet, she was immediately surrounded by the opera buffs. Sweetly, she told them she knew little about the art form but wanted to learn. “It’s important to me because opera is one of George’s favorite things,” she said. (“George” is drop-dead handsome restaurateur George Santo Pietro, once the boyfriend of Linda Evans, now White’s husband.)

Richard Engel--president of Powerplant Specialists Inc. in Costa Mesa--invited the couple to join him for a night out because he and his wife, Jolene, have become their good friends.

“George and I are Ferrari nuts,” Engel said during the wine reception. “We both have our cars serviced at the same place and found we got along well.” Besides Ferraris--Engel has several--the friends learned that they share a passion for opera and skiing. In fact, it was Engel who flew the newlyweds home from Aspen in his Lear jet after the couple married six weeks ago. (White admitted that she was a reluctant skier, fearing a mishap on the slopes. “If I can’t walk, I can’t work,” she declared.)

Guests plucked appetizers from silver trays decorated with napkins folded like swans before sitting down to a dinner that began with salad, ended with double-chocolate mousse pie, and offered scampi and veal in between.

“This is a big night for me,” said Engel, who, along with Reinsch, donated $50,000 to underwrite “A Masked Ball.” “This is a very extravagant number for Opera Pacific to present. The sets are as elaborate and big as they come.”

Engel’s passion for opera began when he was a child, he said. “My mother raised me on it. I’d come home from football practice, and she’d have an opera on. I was the only guy on the football team who could sing in Italian.” “La Traviata” was a favorite. So was “Aida.”

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Engel, who lives in Belcourt in Newport Beach, has high hopes for Opera Pacific. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be the fourth or fifth largest opera company in the United States,” he said. “We have the money available here in Orange County. And we have the talent and the opera buffs. Orange County should become an opera mecca. Quite frankly, that is Opera Pacific’s design.”

Here comes the sun: Who needs Le Cirque, that stuffy watering hole for the rich and famous in New York, when you’ve got Le Cirque du Soleil (circus of the sun) under a $750,000 tent at South Coast Plaza? Nobody. The Segerstrom clan was out in full force at the premiere performance of Cirque du Soleil on Friday night. The event concluded with a benefit bash that saw performers and local arts lovers rubbing elbows on behalf of the Newport Harbor Art Museum, the Orange County Performing Arts Center, South Coast Repertory and the Laguna Art Museum.

A crowd standout: Segerstrom family matriarch, Ruth Segerstrom, with her grandson, Anton. “I love the circus,” said Ruth, fashionable in a Chanel-cut coat and bold gold jewelry. “It brings back fond memories. My husband and I used to gather the neighborhood children and take them with ours. Henry (Segerstrom) loved it, but my husband loved it the most.”

Anton, who helps his family manage South Coast Plaza, said he had a “little bit of the circus” coming to Crystal Court. “We have commissioned a carousel, and it’s coming over on the boat right now,” he said.

The scoop: A benefit is being planned to introduce the carousel to the public. Anton says the bash will be staged at the end of March. The beneficiary? “Yet to be determined,” he said. Are you listening party chairwomen?

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