Stonehenge Goes to the Ball : Things English Dot the Decor at Opera Pacific Party

They were stingy with their Stonehenge at Opera Pacific’s sixth annual Opera Ball, hiding the large carved columns (actually a Styrofoamhenge) behind a stage curtain for most of the cocktail hour and all through dinner.

But the monument was only one of several historical flourishes at Saturday’s “Moonlight on an English Garden” in the Grand Ballroom of the Disneyland Hotel.

The event committee, chaired by Milli Wieseneck and Martha Green, played loose and free with centuries and geography--setting their potted tribute to English landscaping (which came of age in the 18th Century) at the base of their faux monoliths (the originals predate gardens by roughly 4 millennia, and sit on an unadorned plain in Salisbury).

Not to mention the strolling entertainers evoking the Renaissance--a quartet of madrigal singers, two jugglers, a lute player.

This blendered burst of Anglophilia had its source in opera, specifically, Bellini’s “Norma,” which anchors Opera Pacific’s three-show season and will star Dame Joan Sutherland in the title role.

Norma was a Druid priestess, explained opera general director David DiChiera, hence the Stonehenge motif.

(Actually, to be stick-in-the-heath anthropological about it, the Stone Age landmark, which is popularly believed to have been built by the Druids, predates the Celtic clan by 1,000 years.)

But history was not on the minds or lips of the nearly 700 guests who paid $150 each to attend the dinner-dance.

Nor was it a topic at the pre-party reception attended by 80 underwriters--30 couples at $1,000-per-couple, and 20 underwriters of specific portions of the event, such as printing and set construction. Net proceeds for the evening were an estimated $100,000, according to Opera Pacific’s Judy Rybicki.

Letting the party theme go to her head, Carolyn Paap donned a delicate floral hair ornament designed by her husband, Charlie, which included hyacinth and English heather.

Charlie Paap, who in past years designed the ball’s flower arrangements and this year procured table favors, was among the few men to wear tails. But, why no tie?

“The dry cleaner lost it,” he said, fingering his open collar.

“Ah c’mon,” laughed Carolyn, “I’m getting tired of that story. Say this is the new look--the California Look.”

Sporting a decidedly English look was Joanne Sokolski, who said she drew the sketch for her unusual custom-designed gown.

“I had this dress made when I thought this would be a real English party--not avant-garde English,” said Sokolski, gathering in the yards of shimmery brocade cascading from her shoulders to the floor.

“Drapes!” crowed her husband, Michael, eyeing his wife’s outfit. “We have no drapes left in our house!”

As the lobby filled outside the ballroom, the underwriters got a brief preview of the stage--the curtain went up at 7:15, unveiling set designer Susan Bartlett’s quite realistic-appearing columns (Styrofoam), their tops shrouded in pink-lit smoke, their bases surrounded by pots of chrysanthemums, tulips, iris and ferns.

“Remember ‘Gorillas in the Mist’?” quipped guest Ted Johnson. “This must be Stonehenge in the Mist.”

After a trumpet quartet performed a bracing set, the curtain descended and guests streamed into the ballroom for dinner of lobster bisque under pastry, beef Wellington, garden salad and chocolate torte.

Sometime between salad and torte a medium temblor rumbled through the room, setting the enormous crystal chandelier swaying and triggering ripples of nervous laughter. But ‘Foamhenge stayed erect, and when the stage curtain was raised again at 10 p.m., to the strains of the overture from “Norma” and fresh billows of smoke, the crowd grew silent.

The brief program that followed included an audiotaped message from Sutherland, a slide show of her in several opera costumes and a taped version of the “Casta Diva” aria from “Norma.”