While the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music is presenting its mainstage opera season next year, it will be searching for a new head of the opera department.

        Malcolm Fraser, department chair and holder of the J. Ralph Corbett Distinguished Chair in Opera, has been on medical leave this academic year with a hematologic disorder. He has been on the faculty since 1986.

        CCM Dean Douglas Lowry will name a committee in the fall to search for Mr. Fraser's successor. Professor Kelly Hale will continue as acting director of opera until the search has been completed.

        CCM's mainstage season will be highlighted by two operas in 2002-03. Mozart's witty masterpiece, The Marriage of Figaro, will be presented Feb. 13-16 in Patricia Corbett Theater. Nick Mangano will direct and Zhang Xian will conduct.

        Debussy's only opera, Pelleas et Melisande, will be mounted May 15-18 in Corbett Auditorium. It will be directed by visiting professor Thomas de Mallet Burgess and conducted by Mark Gibson, director of orchestral studies.

        The rest of the mainstage season, already announced, includes One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (Oct. 31-Nov. 3); The Boys From Syracuse (Nov. 21-24); The Wild Party (Feb. 27-March 9) and The Diviners (April 24-27).

        While Mr. Fraser has been on medical leave this year, Cincinnati Opera artistic director Nicholas Muni has stepped in to teach master classes. He directed CCM's mainstage opera production, The Crucible in February.

        On May 24-25, Sandra Bernhard of San Francisco Opera will direct the CCM Opera Studio production of Three's Company, a one-act opera by Antony Hopkins and librettist Michael Flanders.

        Mr. Fraser's departure actually leaves two vacancies in the top posts of the opera department. In 2000, former CCM opera professor Jonathan Eaton, an internationally recognized expert on Kurt Weill, left to become artistic director of Opera Theater of Pittsburgh and to build a graduate program in opera at Carnegie Mellon University. Mr. de Mallet Burgess has been filling in as a visiting professor for Mr. Eaton, on a two-year contract.

        Subscriptions to the 2002-03 CCM Mainstage season are $115 for six productions; $42 for a two-show miniseries (drama, musical theater or opera). Renewals will be sent to subscribers in early summer. Single tickets ($23 adults; $13 students) will go on sale in October. For information call 556-4183.

Red hair raises profile
Playing cards promote patriotism
Russian painter turns everyday into extraordinary
Get to it
NBC gets rid of weakest links
Even 'Heroes' can't go home again
Tristate Best Sellers List
What Tristaters Are Reading
CCM opera is seeking new director
Ovation offers trio of satirical spoofs
Supersuckers' shtick doesn't come together