Celebrating the Centennial Season!
	From the Director Centennial Season Commemorative Book Centennial Season Program Notes Print and Video Program Notes Centennial Series

Centennial Season Commemorative Book

The Cal Performances Centennial, 1906-2006:
100 Years of Performing Arts Presentation on the UC Berkeley Campus

$15

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Discover the fascinating history of the presentation of the performing arts on the UC Berkeley campus with this special commemorative book, published in conjunction with Cal Performances' Centennial Season — our 100th year of bringing the world's best in music, theater, and dance to UC Berkeley and the Bay Area at large.

On May 17, 1906, the celebrated French stage star Sarah Bernhardt performed Racine's Phèdre at the University of California's Hearst Greek Theatre, a benefit for the earthquake and fire victims of the San Francisco disaster that occurred the preceding month. Putnam's Monthly called Bernhardt's staging it "one of the great events in world dramatic history". Ever since that landmark performance Berkeley has witnessed a parade of stage luminaries and artistic triumphs.

These can be seen in The Cal Performances Centennial, 1906-2006: 100 Years of Performing Arts Presentation on the UC Berkeley Campus. The account is not only a history of one of the country's most vital cultural institutions, but also a bird's-eye-view of the public's evolving taste in performing arts over the past century.

From Olivia de Havilland and Mickey Rooney in Max Reinhardt's open-air staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream; to then-Cal Performances' director Betty Connors chasing down Dylan Thomas in local taverns; to the idiosyncratic piano genius Glenn Gould rehearsing in overcoat and muffler during a fall heat wave, performing arts presentation on the Berkeley campus has had a colorful and fascinating history. Here you will find Alfred Hertz leading the San Francisco Symphony in its first children's concert, attended by 2,000 school students in Harmon Gymnasium in 1922; George Gershwin in one of his final performances in 1937; the emergence of the folk music and jazz scenes in concerts by John Jacob Niles, Pete Seeger, Louis Armstrong and Dave Brubeck; and Jean-Louis Barrault's counterculture Rabelais, performed at Zellerbach Hall amidst campus closure during the Kent State shootings in 1970.

In the past 20 years, the exceptional growth in arts presentation under the direction of Robert Cole has established Cal Performances as a leader in the international arts scene, and the kind of place where careers are made. European, Russian, Asian and South American artists vie for a coveted place on the season, and the public routinely enjoys the likes of the Kirov and Bolshoi ballets & orchestras, the Grand Kabuki Theater of Japan, the Gate Theater of Dublin, Mark Morris Dance Group and such stars as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Cecilia Bartoli, Maxim Vengerov and Yo-Yo Ma.

Book Sneek Peeks!
	cover			table of contents
	a message from the chancellor			a message from the director of cal performances
	chapter 01 the athens of the west			profile: sarah bernhardt
	profile: benjamin ide wheeler			profile: phoebe apperson hearst
	profile: margaret anglin