By Joseph McLellan
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, October 4, 1998; Page G10

The D.C. public schools last month drastically reduced the annual subsidy for the D.C. Youth Orchestra Program, despite many letters of protest and a substantial body of recent research indicating that the influence of musical studies tends to improve students' achievements in all their other fields of study.

Coincidentally, in a newsletter published by the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music at Catholic University, Dean Elaine Walter observed that students entering the School of Music have consistently had the highest average SAT scores of those entering any department of the university. The Youth Orchestra, in its 37 years of existence, has won many awards and has scored far above the system's average in the percentage of its alumni who receive college acceptances and scholarships. The practical result of the budget cut is that many students who would have enrolled in the program are unable to do so because of the tuition they would have to be charged.

Opera: A couple of new books are calculated to attract those who want some reading to get them into an operatic mood:

"A Season of Opera: From Orpheus to Ariadne," by Rev. M. Owen Lee (University of Toronto Press, $30) is a collection of intermission talks -- serious but never ponderous -- from the Metropolitan Opera's Saturday afternoon broadcasts. Father Lee, a Catholic priest and professor emeritus of classics at the University of Toronto, is very popular with the Met's radio audiences for reasons that this book makes obvious: He goes deeply below the surface of "Il Trovatore," "Tristan und Isolde," "Porgy and Bess" and more than a dozen other operas without ever losing the reader's interest.

"Cinderella and Company: Backstage at the Opera With Cecilia Bartoli," by Manuela Hoelterhoff (Knopf, $25) lacks the depth of Lee's book but compensates with a bright, witty, far-ranging, delightfully gossipy surface. Hoelterhoff, former arts editor of the Wall Street Journal, has an eye for anecdotes, and she sprinkles her pages liberally with witty, often acid-tinged, one-sentence descriptions of artists who range from rising young singers of Bartoli's generation to such historic figures as Maria Callas, Herbert von Karajan and Luciano Pavarotti.

Winners: Judith Ingolfsson, a 25-year-old violinist from Iceland, took first place in the fifth quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, winning the largest prize awarded in any violin competition. Besides $30,000 in cash, she won a gold medal, a recording contract and concert engagements throughout Europe and North America that give her total winnings a value of more than $200,000. Second prize, $15,000, went to Liviu Prunaru, 29, of Romania and third prize, $10,000, to Ju-Young Bak of South Korea. Other finalists were from Korea, Britain and China. No American contestants survived the semifinals.

Benefit: Andrew Lloyd Webber did not invent "The Phantom of the Opera," as will be demonstrated in the Harris Theatre at George Mason University with a showing of the original spooky, silent 1925 movie starring Lon Chaney. The proceeds of the performance will be used for maintenance and improvement of the theater's Wurlitzer pipe organ, which will provide musical accompaniment, assisted by a grand piano.

Free concerts: The Washington Bach Consort, which has won repeated critical superlatives for its concerts, will begin its 10th annual, free Noontime Cantata series Tuesday in the Church of the Epiphany on G Street NW, and will continue on the first Tuesday of each month throughout the season. Also free are the Rush Hour Concerts held at 5:30 p.m. on the last Tuesday of each month in the Church of St. John, Lafayette Square.

Premieres: "Billy and Zelda" by Tina, Dale and Eva Davidson will have its world premiere in Wilmington, Del., Dec. 11-13, in three performances by Opera Delaware. Accompanied by string quartet and percussion, it is described as "the story of two children lost in death and found by love." The same company will present another rarity on March 6 and 7: "Charlotte's Web," based on E.B. White's novel, with words and music by Charles Strouse, who is probably best-known for "Annie" and "Bye Bye Birdie."

Seminar: Music will be the subject of the first seminar in a new series titled "The Arts: Toward the 21st Century," at the George Washington University. The seminar, Monday, Oct. 5 at 5:30 in Room 403 of the university's Marvin Center, will be free and open to members of the public, who are invited to participate in the discussion.