Mainly Mozart and a Dash of Rock ‘n’ Roll at ‘Le Bal Masque’

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart may have been hot stuff in his day, but, great balls of fire, everybody knows he was no Jerry Lee Lewis.

With chamber music in the concert hall and rock ‘n’ roll in the ballroom, Saturday’s “Le Bal Masque d’Amadeus” fund-raiser offered patrons of the Mainly Mozart Festival one of the more varied double bills of recent times. And, although physical reactions to the performance of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola in E-flat Major, K.364, may have been limited to a few tears coursing down blushing cheeks as the music swelled to andante tempo, there was a whole lot of shaking going on at the Top of the Kingston, where Barry Levich and The Society Band gave the raspberry to all the long-hair stuff.

At 7 p.m., an air of calm politesse reigned in the lobby of the Spreckels Theatre. The 165 guests who had signed on for the following gala and another 100 major festival patrons hobnobbed over Champagne to discuss the previous evening’s Mainly Mozart performance, widely hailed as a triumph in music, and the green grapes coated in pungent cheese and chopped nuts, widely hailed as a triumph in canapes.

The Mainly Mozart move to the Spreckels pleased Florence Goss, the acknowledged godmother of the San Diego Symphony, who said the change in venue--the first two of the annual festivals were given outdoors on the Old Globe Theatre’s Festival Stage--brought symmetry to the city’s performance schedule. “Now the music scene is complete,” she said. “We have the Civic Theatre for opera, Symphony Hall for concerts and now the Spreckels for chamber music. It’s an ideal situation.”

In a rare pre-performance appearance, festival music director David Atherton wove suavely through the crowd. Later, he told the audience from the stage, “You are very special people, this concert is put on only for you.” A special feature of this intimate, private entertainment, which featured soloists William Preucil and Cynthia Phelps, was Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll,” which preceded the three movements of the Mozart sinfonia.

Not every guest obeyed the injunction to appear masked at the ball given on the top floor of the festival’s title sponsor, the Kingston Hotel, but chairwoman Suzanne Koch partly took up the slack by sporting two masks, both of peacock feathers. The smaller, which she described as “camouflage,” adorned the cast that bound a wrist broken in a riding accident.

It was a busy day for Koch--earlier in the day, she reported for duty as reservations chairwoman of the annual “Wine and Roses” event given by the Juniors of Social Service at the University of San Diego--but she and co-chair Nancy Hester nonetheless found time to frame the proper, period mood in the ballroom. Of the decor, she said, “We brought in some token cherubs to make it sort of baroque or rococo, but the Kingston is pretty baroque anyway, so it didn’t take much.” The cherubs posed shyly atop marble columns; elsewhere, delicate pink and white topiaries floated above the tables on narrow crystal columns.

The financial woes of the Kingston, seized by creditors in April, nearly scuttled the event, especially when the departing previous management took along the liquor license. But a caterer with the appropriate license was brought in to keep the wine flowing at the ball, and hotel chef Deborah Helm came through with a menu of filet in Cabernet sauce, pastries filled with forest mushrooms, and chocolate tart in caramel sauce.

After the concert, Mainly Mozart principals filed into the ballroom to offer comments that could have been scored into a concerto of praise for the orchestra.

“Tonight’s music was the finest I personally have ever heard,” said chairman Blaine Quick. “I think we’ve finally brought the festival to the festival.”

Board President Don Worley said, “If there’s better music anywhere, I don’t know where it is.”

Later, in formal remarks, he expanded on this theme and told the crowd, “This festival is truly unique. So few people realize what a remarkable orchestra is brought to San Diego every summer under David Atherton. These people are the best of the best, the first chairs of the leading orchestras of the land, and they come in part just for the pleasure of playing in this series.”

And just after he said that, the ballroom’s retractable roof rolled back, Barry Levich rolled out “Your Mama Don’t Dance and Your Daddy Don’t Rock and Roll,” and those same musicians who had played Mozart so feelingly stepped out and hoofed it under the stars.

Among those present were Linda and Charles Owen, Sandra and Jeffry Schafer, Lauren and Sol Lizerbram, Crystal and Det Merryman, Carolyn and George Saadeh, Anne and Sam Armstrong, John Booth Koch, Carolyn and Damon Siskin, Terri and Jonathon McMurtry, Margaret and Victor Sell, Jo Ann and Lee Knutson, Leila Goetz with Tom Babeor, Darlene and Donald Shiley, Penne and Ted Horn, Eleanor Roth, Evelyn Fox, Sook and Richard Bower, and Nancy and Gary Laturno.

That Point Loma’s venerable Thursday Club chose to transform itself into Club Thursday on a Wednesday was of rather less import than the result, the first musical review the club has sponsored in some years, given as a combined benefit for San Diego Hospice and the Balboa Theatre Foundation.

The May 29 opening kicked off four nights of dinner shows in the organization’s Spanish Revival clubhouse, built in 1928 to house the meetings and activities of one of the city’s oldest philanthropic groups. Sold out through its limited run, “Club Thursday” attracted about 160 patrons per night with a bill of fare that included chicken Wellington and a list of reliable Broadway hits performed--with immense enthusiasm--by club members and spouses.

The Thursday Club’s first review was given in 1962 (the late Toni Michetti, to whom “Club Thursday” was dedicated, produced this show), but chairwoman Patty Molyneaux said that a theater group functioned as long ago as the 1920s. She described “Club Thursday” as “an intimate little cabaret. We wanted to put on a good show for our beneficiaries, but we also just wanted a good production, because we have a lot of fun with it. We’re having fun and raising money.”

Dick Meads emceed and sang in a show for which his wife, Betty, not only played piano but wrote original music, lyrics and arrangements. One of the new tunes, “We’ve Got What We’ve Got (And We’ve Made it Last),” was sung gleefully by a chorus line of, as Betty said, “pillars of the community.”

Hie Thompson, who toured with the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra, joined his wife, Marilynn, on the stage in “We’re a Couple of Swells,” Dr. Homer Peabody led the cast in a new version of “Rhythm of Life” and the chairwoman’s husband, George Molyneaux, implored of a fictional Mrs. Worthington, “Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage.” The audience hooted and howled and showed fine appreciation for the chorus line.

Patti Vars choreographed the show; the benefit committee included D’Neane Wilkinson, Jerrie Schmidt, Betty Peabody, Gloria Peters, Lois Thompson, Carmel Rhodes, Jean Thompson, Sharon Hope, Patti Phair, Dorothy Stevenson, Gayle Stephenson, Marily Maceivcz and Johanna Seignious.