What’s on tap this year at the Bowl? What’s not?

AN appearance by author Gore Vidal, San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas’ return for the first time since 1985 and concert performances of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” and Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” will highlight the 2007 Hollywood Bowl season, announced Wednesday.

Tenor Placido Domingo and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra’s founding director, John Mauceri, will be the Bowl Hall of Fame inductees at an opening gala June 22 to benefit the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s education programs. A third inductee is to be announced.

Vidal will be the narrator for Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” as part of a Philharmonic all-American program Aug. 2 to be led by Tilson Thomas. The San Francisco Symphony conductor also will lead an all-Beethoven program, including the “Choral” Symphony with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, on July 31.

Philharmonic music director Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct the original 1869 version of Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” on Sept. 6 with soloists from Russia’s Mariinsky Theatre, including Mikhail Kit in the title role. Although Salonen has conducted excerpts from “Boris,” this will be his first time leading the entire work.

The opera is “something I’ve wanted to conduct for a very long time, for more than 20 years,” Salonen said at a news conference Wednesday on the Bowl stage. “It’s a very timely thing to do, considering what is happening in Russia today. ‘Boris Godunov’ is somehow more modern than ever.”

Salonen will also conduct his own “Foreign Bodies” on Sept. 4, accompanied in another first by the L.A.-based Diavolo Dance Theater with choreography, as previously announced, by company founder Jacques Heim. Mahler’s First Symphony will complete the program.

In his third and final year as principal guest conductor of the Philharmonic at the Bowl, Leonard Slatkin will lead “The Magic Flute” on July 8 with a cast including Isabel Bayrakdarian, Eric Cutler, Sumi Jo and Hugh Russell.

Slatkin also will conduct six Tuesday and Thursday concerts during the season, which runs until Sept. 30. Soloists will include violinist Gil Shaham, cellist Lynn Harrell, bass player Edgar Meyer and pianists Christopher O’Riley, Jonathan Biss and Michel Camilo.

In August, Nicholas McGegan, music director of the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, will lead a two-week project, “The Grand Tour,” devoted to four 18th century European cultural capitals -- London, Venice, Paris and Vienna.

Conductor Kirill Petrenko, general music director of the Komische Oper Berlin, will make his Bowl debut Aug. 28 and 30 in a Russian program including Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with soloists Nikolai Lugansky.

Among highlights featuring the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, tap dancer Savion Glover will appear July 22 dancing to Duke Ellington’s “The River” conducted by Bramwell Tovey; Reba McEntire and Brian Stokes Mitchell will star in a staged production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific” led by Paul Gemignani (Aug. 3-5); and Edwin Outwater will conduct a tribute to the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album (Aug. 10-11).

Rapper and actress Queen Latifah will make her Bowl debut to open the eight-concert jazz series July 11. The series will include a 50th anniversary salute to the Memphis soul label Stax Records (July 18) and a program honoring alto saxophonist Benny Carter (Aug. 8).

chris.pasles@latimes.com