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AT A GLANCE

The Mondavi Center’s 2012-13 brochure is available , for viewing and downloading, and by mail (if you have not already received one). Subscription sales begin Saturday (April 7).

Open house — 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday (April 7), Yocha Dehe Grand Lobby. Learn more about the new season, buy subscriptions.

Subscription sales (starting April 7)

• Online:
• Telephone: (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787
• In person: At the open house or at the box office (open noon-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday).

Staff and faculty discounts — 30 percent on series subscriptions, 25 percent on add-on tickets and choose-your-own subscriptions (five or more events). Also: 10 percent for single-event tickets (single-event ticket sales will begin in August).

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Dateline �ٺ���Ƶ of Oct. 11, 2002, included a special section: “Celebrating the Arts,” to commemorate the opening of the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.

The printed, full-color section included a report and photos on the center’s first official event, the Fall Convocation (Oct. 2), as well as stories and photos on the grand opening celebration (complete with aerial acrobatics on the center’s south wall) and the opening night gala (Oct. 3).

The stories:

The has known from the very beginning how to please an audience.

Opening night, Oct. 3, 2002, featured the San Francisco Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. The symphony has returned many times since, and will be back in 2012-13 — the center's 10th anniversary season.

The rest of the season's lineup is, as you would expect, equally impressive.

As Margrit Mondavi said at the grand opening concert: This center “is going to be a great place to come and see and hear the best artists in the world.”

How true, how true. �ٺ���Ƶ and donors built a beautiful hall with premier acoustics, and the best artists keep coming. They include, in 2012-13, Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman; the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and the newly revived Dance Theatre of Harlem; and Bonnie Raitt, Wynton Marsalis and Ravi Shankar.

The center has distinguished speakers, too. The 2012-13 lineup comprises Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, in conversation with Dean Enrique Lavernia, as part of the College of Engineering’s 50th anniversary celebration; Harry Belafonte, focusing on humanitarianism rather than his singing and acting; and, in a return appearance, Ira Glass of National Public Radio’s This American Life.

The patrons keep coming, too — an average of 100,000 a year. “We are thankful for every one of those visits as we celebrate this, our 10th anniversary season,” Executive Director Don Roth wrote in the new season brochure.

Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi said the “genuine jewel” that is the Mondavi Center “has truly transformed our campus and the Sacramento region.”

She and Roth noted how the center’s mission extends well beyond the presenting program, to artist residencies, master classes and internships. Also, thousands of children — kindergarten through 12th grade, nearly 100,000 total in the center’s first 10 years — attend school matinees.

Subscription sales

But, for now, the focus is on the newly announced 2012-13 program — with subscription sales under way and an open house scheduled from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday (April 7) in the Yocha Dehe Grand Lobby, where you can learn more about the new season and subscription plans. See box for details on ticket sales, the staff and faculty discount, and the open house.

The 10th anniversary season begins with a sampler, if you will, of the Mondavi Center “brand,” the kind of performances that define the arts showcase:

• The San Francisco Symphony, a good example of the kind of partnerships the Mondavi Center has forged in its first 10 years.

• Christian McBride, the first jazz musician to play the center in its first year.

• The pianist Lang Lang, whom the Mondavi Center recognized and booked early in his career, and now brings back as a classical celebrity.

• The Alexander String Quartet, in the first of three 2012-13 programs featuring the music of Franz Schubert. The Alexander String Quartet has not missed a season yet at the Mondavi Center (a record shared with the American Bach Soloists, led by music professor Jeffrey Thomas).

• The sounds of American heritage, exemplified by Bonnie Raitt in her first appearance at �ٺ���Ƶ, with opening act Mavis Staples.

• The Rising Stars of Opera, in which “the finest young operatic voices in recital” will join with the �ٺ���Ƶ Symphony Orchestra in performing Act 1 of Giuseppe Verde’s La Traviata. This program is free to the community, thanks to the generosity of the center’s dear friend Barbara K. Jackson.

• And another free event, the Dancer Films Live Event, based on Jules Feiffer’s cartoon character the modern Dancer.

And that’s just in the first three weeks, Sept. 18 to Oct. 7. Much more will follow into May, in the center’s traditional series (including Orchestra, Concert, Jackson Hall Jazz and Studio Jazz, American Heritage, Studio Classics and Debut) and one new series: Studio Dance.

In addition, the center is teaming with the Department of Music, the �ٺ���Ƶ Humanities Institute, and the Department of Theatre and Dance in an exploration of “The Art of Migration,” in which visual and performing artists will create “a place where different traditions collide, intersect and flourish.”

'Where we've come from, where we intend to go'

“Our 10th anniversary season celebrates where we’ve come from, and where we intend to go over the next 10 years,” said Jeremy Ganter, associate executive director and director of programming.

The new Studio Dance series, for example, grows out of “what we do so well: major dance presentations in extraordinary spaces.” That would be the Barbara K. and W. Turrentine Jackson Hall, for larger shows, and, now, the Larry and Rosalie Vanderhoef Studio Theatre and its intimate setting for Studio Dance.

The inaugural Studio Dance program comprises Lucy Guerin’s Untrained, Shantala Shivalingappa’s Gamaka and the Sacramento Ballet’s Modern Masters, each preceded by selections from The Dancer films.

Speaking of extraordinary spaces, Ganter said the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre will show its flexibility for the National Theatre of Scotland, which will bring no scenery for its presentation of The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart. “All they ask is for us to turn the theater into a pub,” Ganter said. The Mondavi Center crew will get it done, complete with working bars.

Inspired by the Border Ballads, Prudencia Hart is about an uptight academic’s dreamlike journey of self-discovery, among and around the audience, in “a riotous romp of rhyming couplets, devilish encounters and wild karaoke.”

Other returning series

The Children’s Stage series continues in 2012-13, with a San Francisco Symphony Family Concert (The Snowman in sight and sound), the Cashore Marionettes (Simple Gifts) and a Lara Downs Family Concert (Gertrude McFuzz and other selections). The Marvels series also returns, with a lineup that includes Cirque Mechanics.

The World Stage series includes Ravi Shankar and Ballet Folklorico de Mexico de Amalia Hernandez, while With a Twist includes the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and Charles Ross’ One Man Star Wars Trilogy.

The Crossings series spans generations: the band Medeski Martin & Wood, against the backdrop of an updated take on light shows of the 1960s; the string quartet ETHEL, with special guest Todd Rundgren, recalling the restless ’70s; and the Jogja Hip Hop Foundation from Indonesia.

The holiday season brings Danu’s Celtic music celebration, An Nollaig in Éirinn (Christmas in Ireland), Cantus’ All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914; and the American Bach Soloists, but not for Handel’s Messiah, as in years past. Instead, the ABS and the San Francisco Girls Chorus will bring a new holiday concert to the Mondavi Center.