McCartney Is ‘Oratorio’ Reception’s Nowhere Man

His favorite Scottish ale was on tap. His preferred all-veggie appetizers were in the fridge. And a piano player was poised to play his haunting composition “Yesterday.”

But former Beatle and animal-rights activist Paul McCartney was a no-show at Diva, site of the post-performance reception that saluted the West Coast premiere of his “Liverpool Oratorio” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Saturday night.

Party chairwoman Jolene Engel, for one, was crushed. “Right until the curtain went up, I was sure he would be in the audience,” she said.

(Indeed. For months, it has been known that McCartney had purchased seats--Row A, First Tier--for the event. Engel eyeballed them more than once during the performance.)

But the bash must go on. So Engel and her co-chairwoman, Paula Lingelbach, moved bravely among the well-wishers who had paid $100 each to sip champagne, dine on appetizers and white chocolate Grand Marnier souffle and--they had dreamed --schmooze with the musician who had composed a salute to the city of his birth.

“Ah, well, his music is here, right?” said Beatles’ fan Chip Rosenbloom, 28, son of L.A. Rams owner Georgia Frontiere. Frontiere helped underwrite the performance, which was presented (and performed, in part) by the Master Chorale of Orange County.

The party’s low-key mood lifted when Master Chorale director William Hall made a grand entrance, saluted the visionaries “who underwrote the production” and presented a score of “Liverpool Oratorio”--autographed by the ex-Beatle--to Frontiere.

“What a nice surprise,” she said. Would she frame it? “No, I think I’ll try to learn it,” said the soprano, who performs occasionally at small benefits.

In a private moment, Hall said he had received a call earlier in the week from McCartney’s agent, who told him “Paul would probably pop over” for the performance.

“But, I knew he was recording a new album in England,” Hall said. (It’s reportedly his most widely anticipated collection in years.) “And I know how demanding those schedules can be.”

*

Starry, starry night: As promised, they all showed--Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sly Stallone and Bruce Willis--on Friday night at the premiere of their new restaurant, Planet Hollywood, South Coast Plaza.

Braving black skies shot with lightning, Willis, Demi Moore and Schwarzenegger came by helicopter from Los Angeles to the Santa Ana eatery that features a galaxy of movie memorabilia (for starters, a life-size “Alien,” which loomed like a grotesque guardian angel over the crowd.)

Stallone, who escorted lithe model Jennifer Flavin, came to Orange County earlier in the day to play a game of golf before he hit the mega-bash that also saw stars Stevie Wonder, Sean Young and Christian Slater mingle with high-profile locals such as Henry and Renee Segerstrom.

“This is a place where people can get close to things they’ve only seen from a distance,” said Moore, who, that day, had wrapped the flick “Indecent Proposal,” with Robert Redford. (Her “A Few Good Men” comes out Dec. 11.) “People see the memorabilia, and it brings back the emotion of the movie,” she added.

The emerald-eyed Moore, who has created two nude sensations on the cover of Vanity Fair (one when she was pregnant, the other, when her buff, postpartum body was painted with a “tux”) looked downright conservative in a two-piece caramel and black ankle-length suit-dress.

Asked what she was thinking when she caressed the clay at the potter’s wheel in her blockbuster hit “Ghost,” she smiled and said: “I’ll leave that to your imagination.”

The party’s highlights: watching Bruce Willis make love to his harmonica (accompanied by his Red Devils band) and hearing Stevie Wonder bring the house down when he sang “High Heel Sneakers.”

“ Put on your high-heel sneakers, “ Wonder sang to the fashionably hip crowd. “Yesssssss! Yessssssss,” screamed guests.

And the food : tin after tin of beluga caviar served up with poufs of sour cream on toast points shaped like stars (what else?), a mountain of fajitas, roast ham, roast turkey, pizza, you name it.

This was a party in two parts. The first: the downstairs scene, which swarmed with, well, party-goers. The second: the upstairs (set up on the mega-balcony and the mezzanine) where the stars mingled with VIPS (the Segerstroms and local Planet Hollywood partners who included Antonio Cagnolo and Terry Antonelli. Joked Antonelli: “We’re looking forward to tomorrow, when the bleeding stops--when we start ringing those cash registers up.”)

Seen chatting with Bruce Willis--casually outfitted in khaki-colored slacks and tan and white striped shirt--was Henry Segerstrom, who helped lure the new eatery to South Coast Plaza Village.

“Bruce was telling me that he has shopped at South Coast Plaza for a long time,” said Segerstrom. “But he hasn’t had the chance to visit the Performing Arts Center. I told him he should.”

Said Renee Segerstrom (who wore a diamond-studded gold planet-shaped pendant by Paloma Picasso): “ This is exciting. Love it!”

Faces in the crowd: Orange County Supervisors Harriett Wieder (in black leather) and Gaddi Vasquez (“All I want is a Planet Hollywood jacket,” he teased); Eli Samaha, owner of the Roxbury nightclub in Los Angeles; restaurateur David Wilhelm; Hal and Jeanette Segerstrom (“I sense a bit of a generation gap,” she joked); Matt and Tina Schafnitz (she was miffed that Sly and Arnold left early); Susie and Dan Hernandez; Planet Hollywood Chairman Keith Barish; Planet Hollywood President Robert Earl, and Frank DiBella, president of Planet Hollywood, South Coast Plaza.