New Pacific Symphony season to have a taste of opera

The Pacific Symphony will try to relight a torch for opera in Orange County starting next year — not with full productions like those that vanished when Opera Pacific went under late in 2008, but with “semi-staged” concert versions of Puccini’s “La Boheme” and Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel.”

The two operas — casts will be announced later — will be part of a three-year sung-music initiative called “Symphonic Voices,” described by Pacific Symphony as “an effort to restore [opera] to Orange County.” It starts with the 2011-12 season at the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa that the orchestra announced Monday morning.

Rather than trying to produce full-scale opera, the orchestra will present a hybrid form that deploys props, movement to dramatize scenes, and some costume elements as singers share a concert stage with the orchestra. The hope, Pacific Symphony president John Forsyte said in a release announcing the season, is to renew operatic music’s presence at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts while capturing “some of the theatrical drama so important to conveying opera’s ultimate power.”

The three performances of “La Boheme” (April 19-22, 2012) will be conducted by the Pacific Symphony’s music director, Carl St.Clair, and staged by director A. Scott Parry, who was in charge across the street in Segerstrom Hall during the fall of 2008 for what turned out to be Opera Pacific’s swan song, “The Barber of Seville.”

“Hansel and Gretel” will be offered in abbreviated form as part of the child-oriented Family Musical Mornings series. The Pacific Symphony also is signing on as the Orange County co-producer of the Metropolitan Opera’s “Live in HD” transmissions to movie theaters around the country. The orchestra’s role will include lining up venues and promoting the shows, a spokeswoman said.

Other 2011-12 highlights include a season-opening program with guest soloist Sarah Chang performing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and a music-with-visuals extravaganza in which NASA space footage will provide a backdrop for “Also Sprach Zarathustra” and the “Blue Danube” waltz.

Other soloists include pianists Jeremy Denk, Dejan Lazic, Andrew von Oeyen and Joyce Yang, and violinists Henning Kraggerud, Nicola Benedetti and Vadim Gluzman.

St.Clair has given the season a theme — “music inspired by life” — and will explore symphonic contemplations of the end of life in three of the 12 programs by tackling the Ninth Symphonies of Mahler, Beethoven and Schubert.

The annual American Composers Festival, in March 2012, focuses on the Persian musical heritage; it coincides with Nowruz, the traditional Persian New Year celebration. St.Clair will share the podium with Farhad Mechkat, former music director of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra, for a program of traditional Persian music and the world premiere of “Peace Oratorio,” by Richard Danielpour, an American with Iranian roots.

Also coming are the world premiere and a U.S. premiere of pieces by Michael Daugherty, the West Coast premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s “Sidereus,” inspired by Galileo, and pieces by James Newton Howard, Thai composer Narong Prangcharoen and “Radiant Voices” by St.Clair’s old friend Frank Ticheli.

St.Clair will conduct eight of the programs, which are played three times each, usually Thursdays through Saturdays. The guest conductors are Kraggerud, Giancarlo Guerrero, Christoph Konig and Michael Stern.

For the full schedule go to https://www.latimes.com/culturemonster

mike.boehm@latimes.com