Soka University

Along with the supposed millions who belong to the Soka Gakkai and NSA are thousands who have left the sect; they considered it a dangerous cult. ALLAN B. ALTSCHULER Santa Barbara

Giuseppe Verdi's 200th birthday celebration resumes in Southern California this weekend with the three-day Italian Opera Festival at the Soka Performing Arts Center in Aliso Viejo. The composer's birthday was Oct. 10. On Saturday, the festival at Soka University, an offshoot of the annual Tuscia Operafestival in Viterbo, Italy, will feature a “Viva Verdi!” program that includes overtures and arias from 10 of his works, including “La Traviata,” “Il Trovatore,” “Aida,” “Otello” and Verdi's “Requiem.” Stefano Vignati, the Tuscia festival's music director, conducts the Tuscia Operafestival Symphony with reinforcements from the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, San Diego.

Students and faculty of the new Soka University of America will be on campus today for dedication ceremonies, seminars and tours, officials said. Public tours, concerts and lectures will be Friday on the $220-million, 103-acre campus, which will open in the fall with 120 students. Surrounded by the Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park, the Mediterranean-style campus comprises a library, student center, dormitories and recreation center. The first Soka school was founded in Japan 40 years ago.

  Tommy Hanson spent six days away from the Angels - long enough, he thought, to mourn the death of his stepbrother. In his second start after rejoining the team, catcher Chris Iannetta called time out and walked to the mound. “Are you all right?” Iannetta asked Hanson. Iannetta was not the only teammate to wonder. “Everyone said I looked like a zombie,” Hanson said. The Angels were about to fly to Houston. They called him in for a private meeting and told him to stay home, and to take all the time he needed to get well.

On behalf of Soka University, I am writing in response to your "Park the Expansion Elsewhere" (editorial, May 2). First, we are hard-pressed to understand how the land in question can be described as "parkland" as the editorial states. True, Soka University owns 580 acres of land within the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. However, our property has always been privately owned (as is most of the property within the National Recreational Area), and for more than 60 years there has been development throughout our land.

I was appalled to read in The Times ("Assembly Passes Bill to Hinder Soka's Plans," Valley Edition, Jan. 30) that Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) was crowing about initiating a bill in the Assembly that would deny Soka University the right to call itself a university. I was even further appalled that the Assembly passed the bill without even knowing the facts. All you have to do is pick up any international university directory to find out that Soka is indeed a university.

A two-year effort to bring Italian opera to south Orange County will come to fruition Wednesday with the opening of the three-night Tuscia Operafestival at the Soka Performing Arts Center in Aliso Viejo. Organizers of the festival, an annual summer event in Viterbo, Italy, first announced in 2010 that they hoped to present a three-week festival that September at a harbor-front park in Dana Point. Logistical and funding problems ensued, and the focus shifted to Soka University, where a new 1,034-seat performing arts center opened last year.

The new season at the Soka Performing Arts Center in Orange County will feature appearances by the Warsaw Philharmonic, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and Vancouver Symphony, as well as by pianists Jeremy Denk and Joyce Yang, and cellist Alisa Weilerstein. The venue, which is the newest classical hall in Southern California, opened last year at Soka University in Aliso Viejo. The 2012-13 season is set to begin in September. Soka's symphony series will include the Warsaw Philharmonic, with pianist Yulianna Avdeeva (Nov.

Soka Performing Arts Center Where: Soka University, 1 University Drive, Aliso Viejo When: Opens 8 p.m. Saturday with Pacific Symphony concert Full schedule and ticket information: http://www.performingarts.soka.edu

There is something new under the South Orange County sun. The Soka Performing Arts Center, which opens Saturday night with a gala concert by the Pacific Symphony, may seem but a modestly budgeted $73-million facility at a small, little-known 10-year-old private liberal arts college The facility at Soka University of America, tucked away in the hills of Aliso Viejo, consists of a multipurpose hall of about 1,000 seats and a black box named Nelson...

The new Soka Performing Arts Center in Aliso Viejo will debut Sept. 17, offering what appear to be by far the lowest major-venue ticket prices in the region, for its opening season of 23 shows. The 1,034-seat hall features acoustics by Yasuhisa Toyota, famed for his work on such projects as Walt Disney Concert Hall. Jazz, classical music and world music will be the main fare at the $73-million auditorium and arts classroom complex on the Orange County campus of Soka University, a small liberal arts institution affiliated with the Tokyo-based Buddhist movement Soka Gakkai.

What the San Fernando Valley is celebrating this week ? the debut of a major performing arts center that figures to be a source of enjoyment and pride for an area that had been short on cultural bragging rights ? is on the agenda for southern Orange County too. In Aliso Viejo, a small but wealthy private school, Soka University of America, has begun the countdown toward October, when it expects the first public notes to sound in its Soka Performing Arts Center. Construction has been completed on the 1,034-seat auditorium that, together with a companion building for arts classrooms, studios and offices, cost $73 million (the Valley Performing Arts Center, at 1,700 seats plus an educational building, cost $125 million)

The former finance director of a small, private university in Aliso Viejo was convicted this week of embezzling nearly $2 million in school funds, authorities said Tuesday. Over nearly seven years, while he served as finance director and chief investment officer of Soka University, Kiyoshi Hatanaka, 52, of Aliso Viejo had more than $1.7 million transferred from university bank accounts to his own accounts, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in L.A. The university, which opened in Aliso Viejo in 2001, has about 400 students.

The former finance director and chief investment officer of Soka University of America has pleaded guilty to federal charges of embezzling nearly $1.8 million in university funds, authorities said Wednesday. Kiyoshi Hatanaka, 52, faces up to 10 years in federal prison at his sentencing Aug. 25. As the school's financing director from 1999 to 2006, prosecutors say, Hatanaka transferred the money from university banking and investment accounts to accounts he had created at California Bank and Trust.