The Mann Center for the Performing Arts celebrates its 75th anniversary

Eighty years ago next week - July 8, 1930 - as the nation slid into the Great Depression, the renowned Philadelphia Orchestra came to a natural amphitheater on the east side of Fairmount Park and gave an unprecedented outdoor concert.

As many as a half-million Philadelphians a year were able to hear classical music in the park, through those hard times and into World War II.

For Philadelphia's Bicentennial celebration in 1976, orchestra benefactor and philanthropist Fredric R. Mann oversaw the development of a grand new venue - a covered stage in another natural amphitheater, this time on the west side of the park, near 52d Street and Parkside Avenue. First called the Robin Hood Dell West, it soon was named the Mann Center for the Performing Arts and, in addition to classical music, began to offer popular music concerts as well.

This year, the Mann is celebrating what it is calling its 75th season (the number comes from 1935, when the predecessor Robin Hood Dell Association technically incorporated). This season may be its most diverse, with alternative rock, strict classical, a bit of poppish classical, old-time psychedelic rock, and even an ivory-tickling former U.S. secretary of state among the scheduled performers.

Here are some highlights, beginning with Saturday's revival-tour concert of a late-20th-century cult favorite:

Faith No More. 7:30 p.m. Saturday - The band's songs have been featured in such diverse things as a Levi's commercial, the Somalia war movie Black Hawk Down, a Madden NFL football video game, and Gremlins 2. In its heyday, the group had one of the more varied song lists of the 1980s and 1990s - jazz, funk, hard-core rock, hip-hop, even easy listening. The band's "Second Coming Tour," its first since 1998, stops at the Mann Saturday. (Tickets: $25-$49.50.)

Furthur. 7:30 p.m. July 10 and 11, - These Grateful Dead members always seem so grateful to be alive that they put on more and more concerts. Furthur is led by former Dead-men Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, with several other Deadesque musicians plying the familiar landscape - long instrumentals and even longer concerts. ($33.50 and $43.50.)

Julio Iglesias.

8 p.m. July 15 - These days, Iglesias is the lesser-known Iglesias (to his pop-singing son Enrique), but he's the one with the original wondrous pipes. This is his 42d year pumping out glorious vocals and he is at the Mann for his "Starry Night World Tour." ($49 and $75.)

Squeeze and Cheap Trick.

7:30 p.m. July 16 - An odd combination of the New Wave British band Squeeze and the more traditional American rockers Cheap Trick, both of whom charted a few things in the late 1970s. ($29.50 and $53.50.)

Tchaikovsky Spectacular with the Philadelphia Orchestra. 8 p.m. July 26 - A night of the magnificent Russian with the city's finest. It is capped with a fireworks show to the "1812 Overture." (A reminder: The tradition of free lawn seats for orchestra concerts has gone by the boards this year, a victim of the budget crunch.) ($10-$50.)

Aretha Franklin, Condoleezza Rice, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. 8 p.m. July 27 - What is more pressured - performing sandwiched between the Queen of Soul and the Great Philadelphians or moderating between Hezbollah and the Israelis? At least listening to the first is more pleasant for an audience, and chances are she will get R-E-S-P-E-C-T from all political stripes for this one. Rossen Milanov will conduct the orchestra. ($24-$95.)

Planet Earth Live. 8:30 p.m. July 29 - Audiences will see the most spectacular moments of this BBC series, a portrait of our planet, on a big screen while Oscar-winning composer George Fenton conducts the season finale of the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Mann. ($10-$55.)

The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma. 8 p.m. Aug. 11 - The world's premier cellist plays with musicians from China, India, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas, offering a "roving musical laboratory without walls," according to one critic. ($15-$72.)

Tony Bennett. 8 p.m. Aug. 28 - Leave your heart not in the "city by the bay," but in the park by the Schuylkill with Sinatra's favorite act, the beloved crooner Bennett. ($75 and $90.)