Orange County’s biggest and most prestigious arts organizations rub shoulders with each other in an impressive Costa Mesa cultural campus that’s been decades in the making. The Orange County Museum of Art will join their ranks when it opens later this year next to Segerstrom Concert Hall.But there’s been little significant collaboration among those groups over the years. South Coast Repertory, the Segerstrom Center for the Arts and the many groups that perform there, including Pacific Symphony and the Pacific Chorale, conduct their seasons separately — which is, after all, typical of the signature performing arts companies in most American cities.
This weekend, though, we’ll be treated to something concrete: a production that brings together South Coast Repertory, Pacific Symphony and the Pacific Chorale in a novel creation called “Mozart & Salieri.” Based on “Amadeus,” Peter Shaffer’s hugely popular 1979 play, it tells the story of Mozart’s genius, career struggles and tragic demise through the eyes of a Viennese rival, composer Antonio Salieri.
