This time of year, grand finales should be marked with fireworks, at least figuratively, and that's what Paul Kellogg and Stewart Robertson seem to have in mind for the Glimmerglass Opera.

When this summer's festival ends in August, the two men wind up their tenure as artistic and music director, respectively, and they clearly mean to provide plenty of dazzle and din before they do.

Tomorrow night, the company raises the curtain on its 32nd season and Gilbert and Sullivan's rollicking "The Pirates of Penzance" in a production that will be "somewhere between Lewis Carroll and Monty Python," Kellogg says, quoting set designer John Conklin. Stewart Robertson will be at the helm.

The following night a second comic classic joins the repertoire: Rossini's "The Barber of Seville," complete with thunderstorm. Both operas come to Glimmerglass in new productions, as every opera does there.

Three weeks later, Robertson will preside over the company premiere of Leos Janacek's "Jenufa," a 20th-century masterpiece from what's now the Czech Republic. But before that, Glimmerglass makes opera history with the world premiere of Stephen Hartke's "The Greater Good," an opera based on Guy de Maupassant's short story "Boule de Suif." The music director will be on the podium for that one, too.

Needless to say, keeping a close watch over all will be Paul Kellogg, who has been doing just that sort of thing since 1979, when he became the Glimmerglass general manager. He says he didn't plan this season as a valedictory.

"We essentially stayed with the pattern we've established over the last several years, programming that tries to appeal to as wide a base as possible," Kellogg said. "That's really what it comes down to."

Kellogg didn't mention that "Jenufa," premiering July 22, represents the company's first foray into Slavic repertoire since Glimmerglass staged Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" nearly 20 years ago, or that when "The Greater Good," which is subtitled "The Passion of Boule de Suif," takes its maiden bow July 29, it will be the first time the company has given a full-length opera its first performance.

Kellogg and Robertson clearly had no intention of playing it safe their final season, not when half the fare is a world premiere, always a risky venture, and a dark, brooding piece from way outside what might be called the "standard" repertoire - the works by Puccini, Verdi, Bizet and Mozart that dominate opera seasons in America year after year.

"Stephen is a wonderful composer, and the piece itself is absolutely splendid," says Kellogg. "He's one of the principal 'youngish' American composers, and while it's only his first opera, it's still high time we did something by him. His orchestral stuff is simply marvelous."

At 53, the New Jersey-born Hartke has been garnering rave reviews for some three decades with works ranging from symphonies and concertos (three of the former, two of the latter) to choral works and songs to chamber pieces for various and sometimes startling combinations of instruments. And whatever the format, critics always comment on the accessibility of his music, even with his unquestionably contemporary sound.

"One of the reasons I wanted Stephen to write this piece for us was so I could get the sense of a real composer," says music director Robertson. "He is someone who is writing in a style I thought was very vibrant, that was a little different from a lot of the scores that are being produced these days for the opera houses in this country. Much of what's being produced today is in a very conservative idiom, and Stephen's is a bit more cutting edge, I would say.

Like the critics, Robertson was intrigued by Hartke's way of combining his musical forces: "I think his sense of the color of combinations of voices and instruments is extraordinary, and I think people will be continually fascinated by the sound worlds he creates. The music is not tonal in the traditional way, although you do have the sense of references to tonal areas."

Evidently, another aspect of Hartke's music captivated Robertson. "I think one of the things that Stewart likes about my musical language is that it's rhythmically taut," says the composer. "I do think that a lot of recent American opera errs on the side of pushing too hard on the lyrical and the drawn out. There are lyrical moments in this piece, but some of that is determined by the nature of the story."

That story is set in the early 1870s, during the Franco-Prussian War. The Prussians have occupied Rouen, and a group of upper-crust citizens have gained permission to set out for Le Havre in a horse-drawn coach. In their midst is Boule de Suif, a very generously endowed lady of the "courtesan class," as De Maupassant puts it. Her nickname means "ball of tallow," although we'd probably find "butterball" a more flattering translation. The bluebloods feel less than honored by her presence, and then they realize that she's the only one who packed a picnic basket.

Boule de Suif's willingness to share her food wins her a modicum of acceptance from her famished companions, and their discovery that she's a patriot fleeing Rouen after trying to strangle a Prussian officer with her bare hands clinches it for them. But their tolerance wears thin when they're delayed at a roadblock. The Prussian commandant has decided to lay siege to Boule de Suif and, until she capitulates, he's not going to let her or the others go their way. The autocrats are not amused.

"These people feel put out, but they're only being inconvenienced," Hartke observes, "and yet they still find it possible to betray a member of their party. Of course, there's a certain reason to their argument that if she'll do it with anybody else, why not with this guy."

Even though travelers today encounter roadblocks in many countries, Hartke says he had no intention of being topical. In fact, he says, he and librettist Philip Littell picked out the story long before the current war broke out in the Middle East, for example.

"Some of the things said in the libretto sound topical, as if they were deliberately planted there, but this is just Maupassant telling that story from 1871. I do tend to be drawn to stories that deal with the commonality of human experience and the continuity over time."

Leos Janacek, composer of "Jenufa," is another artist with a decidedly individual approach to music. First staged in 1904, his third work for the theater was his first big success. The composer was then 49, and "Jenufa" opened a whole new chapter in his career, one that would include four more world-class operas: "Katya Kabanova," "The Cunning Little Vixen," "The Makropoulos Affair" and "From the House of the Dead."

"We've not done a Janacek opera here in my time," says artistic director Kellogg. "He's one of the great composers of the 20th century - on all fronts - and I'm hoping that we'll be introducing our audiences to something they'll want more and more of. I think that once people hear this completely original sound that Janacek always manages to have that there will be requests for more."

Stewart Robertson is equally enthusiastic about Janacek's music: "Here was a man who was working in relative isolation for a lot of his life, and his style is so individual. The orchestral writing in 'Jenufa' is just phenomenal. And you've got, as is the case with so many of Janacek operas, a final scene that's so elevating. The human sentiments and the music just rise to a level that hasn't been touched on for the rest of the piece."

Robertson has conducted only one Janacek opera to date, "Katya Kabanova," which was based on a 19th-century theater classic from Russia, Alexander Ostrovsky's "The Storm."

"There's a moment-to-moment intensity about the writing in Janacek that's like driving a car at high speed in a rally somewhere. You just can't let your focus wander for a second," he says. "And when you get to the end of a Janacek opera, any one of them, there has been such an emotional arc that I would imagine you're drained. I always felt that way after I conducted 'Katya,' which has a similar transforming end to it."

"Jenufa" is based on a drama by Janacek's contemporary, Gabriella Preissova, and centers on life in a provincial Moravian village sometime before the turn of the last century. Drawing loosely on fact, Preissova penned a play involving jealousy, maiming and murder that can call to mind Giovanni Verga's "Cavalleria Rusticana," which Pietro Mascagni made into an opera in 1890, an opera Janacek very much admired.

Jenufa, carrying Steva's child, wants him to marry her as soon as possible. Steva's stepbrother, Laca, is in love with Jenufa himself and tries to convince her that Steva wants her only for her looks. In a jealous rage, he slashes Jenufa's cheek and Steva, predictably, is repelled by the scar. Despite the impending birth of his son, Steva has become engaged to another woman.

Laca, still in love with Jenufa, is shocked when her foster mother, Kostelnicka, mentions the baby. Seeing this, Kostelnicka drowns the child, telling Jenufa it died of natural causes. Jenufa and Laca agree to marry.

On their wedding day, the pair are kneeling before Kostelnicka to ask her blessing, when a shepherd boy rushes in to tell the assembled guests that a dead baby has been found in the river. Jenufa identifies one of the garments the child had been wearing, and Kostelnicka admits her crime. As she's led off to the magistrate, Jenufa forgives her, understanding that she acted out of love. Jenufa now offers Laca his freedom, but he declines, and she realizes that she has come to care deeply for him.

Paul Kellogg opines that "Jenufa" is so intense dramatically that "it will just knock people out" when they hear it in the relatively tiny, 900-seat Glimmerglass theater. It's hard to fault his thinking.

The two works that open the season, "The Pirates of Penzance" and "The Barber of Seville," are so familiar they need little introduction. Kellogg says he's a great Gilbert and Sullivan fan, and Robertson offers that while "Pirates" is very fluffy and funny and deliciously brilliant on the surface, it isn't easy to perform. "There's a lot of rhythmic subtlety in both the music and the text. There's also a kind of style that younger American singers don't quite identify with naturally."

Robertson says he and stage director Lillian Groag have spent a huge amount of time in rehearsals just talking about diction and pacing and variety and flexibility of phrasing. "You'll have what look like straightforward, repeated rhythms, and then you look at the way Gilbert constructed the lines or the way Sullivan altered where the stress lies in a repeated phrase. There's tremendous subtlety in it."

Robertson will conduct the season opener and the next three performances of "Pirates," while Gary Thor Wedow in his Glimmerglass debut will be on the podium for the remaining nine performances. "The Barber of Seville" - all 13 performances - will be conducted by David Angus, who is also making his company debut.

"We program the most performances of the pieces that tend to be the most popular, that we expect to sell best," says Kellogg. "In July, our audience is mainly regional. The national and international audience starts coming here in very early August and stays with us through the month."

There's no particular logic behind having two comic operas starting the season, Kellogg says, adding that the Hartke opera is hardly a tragedy. "It has irony all through it, both musically and in the book, and it's great fun in addition to being a rather serious look at human nature."

Kellogg admits he's approaching his final Glimmerglass season with mixed feelings. "This will be my last summer at Glimmerglass, and there's a certain ruefulness in having this all come now, but at the same time I'm excited about what's going to happen this summer."

He'll go on living in retirement in Cooperstown much of the year and intends to come to the opera only as an audience member. "I really think that the best thing for me to do is to let my successor, Michael MacLeod, settle in and be the boss. Michael is charming and smart and funny and so enthusiastic about this place that I'm really happy he's the person who's taking it on. He has a very sophisticated taste in repertory, and he knows his business."

Stewart Robertson, who made his Glimmerglass Opera debut in 1987 with Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," is looking forward to having summers free. He and his wife have a house in Scotland that needs renovation; he wants to conduct at other summer opera festivals, and he means to start a little chamber music festival at his home.

"Given my commitments here and elsewhere, I've had no down time at all for 20 seasons, no fallow time during the year," he says. "I need time to study and think and move projects ahead that I'm involved with during the year, and I think the summer is going to be a time to do that."

Peter Wynne has written for Opera News magazine and the playbills handed out at the Metropolitan and New York City Opera, Carnegie and Avery Fisher Hall and the Kennedy Center in Washington.