Keeping tradition alive
Luciano Chianese on the present-day drama behind the Spoleto festival Few visitors coming to Spoleto today realise just what a tradition of political intrigue is kept alive and thriving behind the unspoilt architectural and artistic splendours of what is arguably one of the most beautiful towns in central Italy.
Once home to Lucrezia Borgia, the hapless daughter of Pope Alexander VI — yes, popes had children in those days — and sister to Machiavelli's 'ideal' prince Cesare Borgia, this town has stumbled into the 21st century with an updated version of the Borgias' ruthless scheming, poisoning, incest and all one would expect in a country that rightfully claims to be the cradle of Western civilisation.
Thankfully, popes seem to have given up procreation, or this piece would have been riddled with Polish princesses proving their father's point by ceremonially burning packets of condoms on the cathedral steps. But the poison that has been pumped through the media concerning the Festival of Two Worlds held here every summer is every bit as noxious as anything the much maligned Lucrezia could have concocted.
Since its founding 45 years ago, the Spoleto festival has developed into one of the foremost events of its kind in Italy. Its reputation for providing an international platform for the launching of new talents has grown alongside an intelligent policy of attracting established artists. These in turn attract a glittering crowd eager both to sip drinks in the town's main square during the day and to pay high prices for performances at night.
When he founded the festival, composer Gian Carlo Menotti was clear that he wanted it to be a festival for young artists. Taking risks was, and largely still is, one of the festival's strong points, creating a feeling of anticipation among the public that is lacking in other festivals such as Bayreuth, Glyndebourne or Salzburg.
Menotti's strong ties with the United States, where his career took off in the late Thirties and established him as one of the major new voices in American opera, allowed him access to vast reserves of talent from over the Atlantic in the early years of the festival.
By the 1960s, when the composer's music came under fire from contemporary music critics for being too traditional and melodious, the festival was in its heyday and its success was no longer tied exclusively to the reputation of its founder. Menotti's strong personal charisma was enough to ensure that artists flocked to Spoleto for comparatively little money, happy with performing in an informal atmosphere amidst beautiful surroundings.
But all idylls end sooner or later and things look very different today. The problem is that Menotti will be 91 this year and his adopted son Francis still lacks credibility with the city authorities despite having been nominated president and artistic director of the festival.
While the town of Spoleto is clearly keen to ensure that the festival continues, it has doubts about Francis's credentials as artistic director. `Gian Carlo Menotti would frequently give up the post for a year and appoint someone else.' points out Gilberto Stella of the Fondazione, a nonprofit-making organisation set up in 1978 to channel specially allocated funds from the government into the festival and rescue it from a 'precarious financial situation'. Gian Carlo Menotti resigned from his position as honorary president of the Fondazione in 1992, when the family filed a suit against the Fondazione for using the name of the festival to raise funds that the festival never sees, as well as for failing to pass on the government's specially allocated funds. But Stella has in turn voiced disquiet about Francis Menotti's financial transparency. 'It has been four years now that we have been denied access to the festival accounts. We have to see all the accounts in order to establish where our part of the government's money has been spent.'
The town of Spoleto is still paying off a bank loan it took out in 1989 to cover part of the £3 million losses the festival had run up over the years, 'and we don't charge the festival a penny for using all the stage equipment and lighting that belongs to us', says Stella, who also laments the fact that the Menottis have virtually cut out any local workforce in the productions.
But Francis Menotti argues that the festival has only ever been £800,000 in the red. He regrets crediting the Fondazione with the idea of the festival, saying he and his father did so only to secure much-needed government funds to help keep the festival offices going during the winter and to make advance payments to artists. Although the statute of the Fondazione does enable it to fund cultural events outside the festival, Gian Carlo Menotti is bitter that £.100,000 has, quite legally, been allocated to a university lecture post in Perugia held by one of the bankers who made up the Fondazione.
'Had I been dead, as the fund would certainly have wished,' concludes the composer from his airy palazzo opposite Spoleto's Romanesque cathedral, 'the Fondazione would undoubtedly have devoured my son by this stage.' But one could hardly expect Menotti to say anything different about his adopted son, whom he first met in the Sixties and who is now married with two children.
Regardless of how he obtained his position, Francis is taking it seriously. He now lives all the year round in Spoleto, where he moved the festival offices from their previous Rome premises and he works there most of the year. 'I can't think why there should be so many people waiting in the wings for this job which takes up 320 days of my year,' he smiled.
Considering that the festival programme has returned to its former glory and that sponsorship is strong, it would appear that Francis is doing well. If he manages to come into his own and grow into his father's shoes, he could well personify that 'continuity' that so worries the Fondazione. And festival-goers savouring the peppermint sauce over their vanilla ice-creams at the Tric-Trac restaurant opposite the cathedral will be able to look up at the fortress where Lucrezia Borgia lived and say 'gone are the days'.
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