The Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts opens today at the University of California, Davis, as a world-class venue for performing arts students and faculty, its thriving major K-12 arts education program, and one of the largest arts and lectures presenting programs in the nation.

Featuring the state-of-the-art 1,800-seat Barbara K. and W. Turrentine Jackson Hall and the versatile 250-seat Studio Theatre, the $57 million Mondavi Center is the premier performance venue in Northern California. Its inaugural season features a mix of seasoned masters, emerging artists, regional professional groups, student and faculty performers, and leading cultural figures in more than 160 performances and lectures.

"With the opening of Mondavi Center, we not only enter a new era of opportunity in arts education for our students, but we also celebrate the creation of a valuable and lasting cultural resource for the entire region," Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef said. "I firmly believe that every arts organization, every audience member, every performing artist and every student from the Napa Valley to the Lake Tahoe basin will be enriched beyond measure by this facility and its programs."

Tonight the Mondavi Center will launch a festival of performances by international touring artists, regional performing organizations, and music, theatre, and dance ensembles from UC Davis. Included among the performances are tonight's concert by the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, and an Oct. 4 recital by mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, accompanied by pianist Robert Tweten.

"Mondavi Center is for everybody," said Brian McCurdy, director of the facility. "That will be evident with our opening festival, which will feature a diverse range of events, from traditional to contemporary, both classical and cutting-edge, from the spectacular to the intimate. We've long felt that the Sacramento region was ready for a truly world-class performing arts facility. Judging by the strength of ticket sales so far, the Sacramento region has indeed demonstrated a cultural appetite comparable to that of audiences anywhere in the country."

With inaugural season attendance projected to be well over 100,000, the Mondavi Center's presenting program will continue the campus's tradition as the home of the largest and most active arts organizations in the Capital Region and one of the most culturally diverse in the nation.

The center will also serve as an academic facility that will help fulfill UC Davis' teaching mission, especially for students in the Department of Music and Department of Theatre and Dance. Elizabeth Langland, dean of humanities, arts and cultural studies, said the completion of the Mondavi Center, to be followed in the next few years by other planned facilities, marks a significant step in the campus's commitment to the future of the arts.

"In order to develop a world-class university, what's needed are the kinds of facilities -- comparable to the quality we offer our scientists -- that provide the world's great artists a venue that highlights their excellence," Langland said.

The center will be the home of the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, the professional in-residence Empyrean Ensemble, the University Chorus and Chamber Singers, the concert band, the gospel choir, Jazz Band, Baroque Ensemble and the UC Davis Wind Ensemble. The Department of Theatre and Dance's first use of the facility will be in November when a new professional performance ensemble presents "The Ten PM Dream." Several other dance programs are planned for the Studio Theatre. In May the Department of Theatre and Dance will join with the Department of Music and the Davis Comic Opera to mount Gilbert and Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore" in Jackson Hall.

In addition, the center will become the heart of UC Davis' school outreach programs for the performing arts. UC Davis has been enhancing K-12 arts education through school outreach programs for more than 30 years. In the past year alone, the program reached 30,000 children in the Sacramento region with school matinees, master classes, lecture-demonstrations, curriculum guides, and other activities.

UC Davis financed the $57 million performing arts center through a combination of university funds and a $30 million capital fund-raising campaign. Among the major donors are Napa Valley wine maker Robert Mondavi and his wife, Margrit, who gave $10 million; Barbara K. Jackson and her late husband, history professor emeritus W. Turrentine Jackson, who gave $5 million; and the Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians, who gave $600,000 toward the performance hall's construction and $25,000 to the school matinee program, as well as $350,000 to endow a UC Davis faculty chair in California Indian studies and $25,000 to fund a student internship in support of the campus's annual Native American Culture Days and PowWow.

Mondavi Center was designed by BOORA Architects of Portland, Ore., with acoustical design by McKay, Conant, Brook of Westlake Village, Calif.; theatrical design by Auerbach + Associates of San Francisco, Calif.; and lighting design by Auerbach + Glasow of San Francisco. The general contractor was McCarthy Building Companies Inc. of St. Louis, Mo.

Comprising 103,637 square feet of space, the building is 100 feet high to accommodate the stage's fly tower. It has an exterior siding of sandstone from India, also used as acoustic paneling inside the main hall along with Douglas fir paneling salvaged from the bottom of freshwater Ruby Lake in British Columbia, Canada.

Jackson Hall was designed as a multipurpose performance facility with up to 1,800 seats, depending on the configuration. The hall can be "tuned" to accommodate the type of performance, with more reverberation for orchestral performances and minimal reverberation for the spoken word. To create the reverberation required for classical music, the hall was designed with a small interior and a shoebox shape similar to the classic concert halls of Vienna, Boston and Amsterdam.

To mitigate noise and vibrations from the nearby railroad and Interstate 80, the building has double-wall construction, with two feet of air space separating the inner and outer walls. The basement under Jackson Hall and a "technical attic" above the ceiling create a "box within a box" for acoustical isolation.

Tickets to Mondavi Center events are available through the UC Davis Ticket Office at (530) 752-1915. For more information visit http://www.MondaviArts.org.