Star power abounds in the Mondavi Center's program for 2007-08, featuring performers like violinist Itzhak Perlman, diva Kiri Te Kanawa and the Alvin Ailey dance troupe, and such distinguished speakers as anthropologist Jane Goodall.

The new season, officially announced this week, includes the Mondavi Center's first presentation of ballet, with the St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre due to perform Russian Seasons and Romeo and Juliet.

The center's sixth season also includes dramatic theater (Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers and 1984), and big names in jazz (Wynton Marsalis) and U.S. "roots" music (Doc Watson), plus Classical Sundays, the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera HMS Pinafore, Handel's Messiah, a Family Series, and a wide assortment of other music and dance acts from around the world.

"The schedule for 2007-08 probably reflects my conviction that there is no real boundary between what people sometimes call 'high art' and everything else," said Don Roth, the Mondavi Center's executive director. "We're probably one of the only places you can see Kiri Te Kanawa one night and Doc Watson the next, and I'm proud of that."

The new season's gala opening is scheduled for Oct. 5, when Te Kanawa is due on stage. She is making what she calls her Farewell Tour after a career in the major opera houses of the world.

In conjunction with the Te Kanawa concert, the Mondavi Center plans to hold its annual Taste of the Season event, a fundraiser for arts education.

Besides soprano Te Kanawa, the Concert Series includes pianist Leon Fleisher, who achieved worldwide acclaim in the 1950s and '60s, only to then lose the use of his right hand due to focal dystonia. He performed left-handed compositions through the years until recently when new therapies allowed him to once again use his right hand.

The Concert Series also includes solo percussionist Evelyn Glennie, described as the only profoundly deaf musician on the international concert stage. Joe Martin, the Mondavi Center's publicity manager, said Glennie plays barefoot, better to feel the vibration of her music.

Perlman, who rounds out the Concert Series, is due back at the Mondavi Center for the first time since its opening season, 2002-03. His return will be a "hot ticket," Martin predicted.

As for dance, Martin said, if you are going to see only one company in your life, make it the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. Its Mondavi Center appearance is part of the troupe's 50th anniversary tour.

Ailey and Merce Cunningham are the familiar names in the Dance Series. Shen Wei Dance Arts is not, Martin said, and that is exactly why people should consider subscribing to the series, to catch the familiar and the new.

The same goes for the center's other series, including Improvisations. Yes, you probably have heard of Wynton Marsalis, who is due at the Mondavi Center with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

"But Improvisations also includes Stefon Harris," Martin said. "People may not know him as well, but we think you will like him."

The vibrophonist played the Mondavi Center once before with his quartet. He is due back this coming season with a nine-piece ensemble, playing reorchestrations of Duke Ellington compositions, as well as Harris' Ellington-inspired suite, The Gardiner Meditations.

"We would like people to have long-term relationships with the Mondavi Center, to see us as a window into the world, to hear new performers and perhaps end up liking them as much as the familiar names," Martin said.

Martin said the coming season's Concert Series features the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, described by Martin as "one of the great Russian orchestras." The series also includes the San Francisco Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic with Pinchas Zukerman, and the Czeck Philharmonic performing an all-Dvorak program.

The American Heritage Series, in its second year, continues to explore "roots" music. The lineup for 2007-08 features two Watsons (bluegrass legend Doc and his grandson Richard), as well as Roger McGuinn, described as the mastermind behind the pioneering folk rock band The Byrds and such 1960s hits as "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Turn, Turn, Turn."

Global Beat programs in the coming season include the singer Mariza, "the new face of Portuguese fado"; Sweet Honey in the Rock, six African-American women who merge a cappella and activism; and Anoushka Shankar, the only artist in the world to be entirely trained by the legendary Ravi Shankar, her father.

The Global Beat lineup also includes Tango Buenos Aires, the Blind Boys of Alabama Holiday Show, Shaolin Warriors, Gamelan Cudamani and the Pacifico Dance Company.

Martin noted this unique Global Beat offering: Day of the Dead Fiesta, scheduled for All Hallow's Eve, Oct. 31, the night before the Day of the Dead. The Grammy Award-winning Mariachi los Camperos de Nati Cano is due on stage to perform "a musical treat that honors the dead in a festival of life," according to the program.

Cirque-works, featuring acrobats and trapeze and trampoline stunts, is set to perform twice, once as a Global Beat offering and once in the Family Series.

A children's troupe called Spirit of Uganda, led by Peter Kasule, who previously led Children of Uganda, is another Global Beat and Family Series entry.

The Family Series also includes Dan Zanes, a onetime rock 'n' roller (the Del Fuegos) who found a second career when he decided to make music for children. Adults like it, too, with Martin describing the music as "ridiculously catchy."

The Distinguished Speakers Series, besides Goodall, includes the Pulitzer prize-winning Seymour Hersh, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, with a talk titled "Chain of Command: How We Got from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib."

Other speakers due at the Mondavi Center in 2007-08: Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio's "Fresh Air;" Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books; Andrew Weil, author of Healthy Aging, Self Healing and Spontaneous Healing; and Luis Alberto Urrea, author of the Campus Community book project, The Devil's Highway.