How to Run a Festival

To many of America's major music makers, festivals are the time for summer reruns. Most of this year's programming, at such places as Tanglewood, Saratoga and Ravinia, bears out the thesis: safe, familiar fare for the listener who prefers to leave his brains at home. It took the usually hidebound Metropolitan Opera to break the mold and demonstrate that a festival can also include the thinking man as well.

Last week the Met concluded a ten-day Verdi stand in Newport, R.I., that combined familiar pieces with a smorgasbord of the unfamiliar representing musicological digging at its frenzied best. The top events were a series of open-air concert performances of Verdi operas, ranging from the well-loved La Traviata and // Trovatore to the ripsnorting, deliriously difficult / Vespri Siciliani. The singing was predictably proficient, the Festival Field amplification acceptable and the attendance fair.

Long Day's Journey. But this was only the beginning. Surrounding these events was a vast array of lesser-known Verdi-era artifacts that placed the standard fare in fascinating musical and historical perspective. Early risers attended taped Italian radio performances of such out-of-the-way operas from Verdi's journeyman days as Attila, The Corsair and Joan of Arc, in which the Maid dies not at the stake but on the battlefield. Later in the day, in one or another of the marble-and-crystal salons in Newport's stately mansions, the offerings included chamber and vocal music by operatic composers, excerpts from other unfamiliar 19th century operas (including the "other" La Boheme, composed by Ruggiero Leoncavallo only months after Puccini's), and a program of knuckle-breaking operatic paraphrases by Franz Liszt, played by Guest Pianist Raymond Lewenthal.

After the evening performances, the hardy repaired to a nearby theater to view long-forgotten movies with operatic backgrounds. Included were such rare delights as Mae West burbling an aria from Samson et Dalila in her 1935 Coin' to Town, and a 1934 version of La Boheme, starring Gertrude Lawrence and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., with "music and lyrics by Giacomo Puccini and G. H. Clutsam," the latter a Hollywood tunesmith in unlikely company.

Digging Deep. Much of this material had to be dug out of the murk. One of Verdi's finest songs is the poignant Pieta, Signor, composed at the end of his career and reflecting much of the same hushed awe of his Manzoni Requiem; not mentioned in the standard Verdi catalogue, the song was flushed out of an obscure Italian library by Verdi Scholar David Stivender. Other long-lost scores, such as the charming and perky Wind Quintet by Ponchielli (of La Gioconda fame) were found in editions long out of print.

Much of this exhumed music and several of the films fell into the category of attractive junk. Still, it generated entertainment as well as better understanding of greater works. Moreover, the Met's in-depth excursion into the byways of musical romanticism seemed uncannily appropriate for Newport. The graceful vulgarity of Verdi's youthful sentimentality curved ingratiatingly around the rococo figurations in Newport's grand salons, rediscovering the setting for which it was conceived. The city's social leaders were also delighted to welcome a new kind of Newport festival--one whose participants and audiences actually wore shoes.

Helpful Hosts. To bring the Met to Newport, a foundation headed by Mrs. Claiborne Pell raised $75,000 toward the total cost of $450,000. Another $50,000 came from Rhode Island Gover nor John Chafee's discretionary fund. The rest was to come from ticket sales, though sporadic rain and fog kept attendance below capacity.

Even with a deficit in prospect, the Met seemed happy with its first fling at full-scale festival activity. Orchestra members, accustomed to night after night of oom-pa-pa in the pit, snapped at the chance to climb out and have a whirl at more demanding chamber music. Singers, especially such younger performers as Soprano Lilian Sukis and Contralto Nancy Williams, responded enthusiastically to the challenge of preparing the song recitals.

"After all," said General Manager Rudolf Bing, "we now have full-time employment for our staff, so it would have cost us $125,000 for the time, even if we had only gone fishing." So the Met went fishing for music instead.

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