Table of Contents     Chapter 1     Chapter 2     Chapter 3     Chapter 4     Chapter 5     Chapter 6     Bibliography   After Thoughts--Summer 2001

Chapter 1         

 The Desire "to Festival"

The basic desire "to festival" is not unlike the social impulse that for uncertain motives makes one ask, "What if we had a party?" Such a fragile impulse may be killed by counter thoughts as: "What if nobody came?" "How do we pay for it?" "What if it rains?" "Where will they park?" Only a strong purpose can overcome such reasonable anxieties. The simple urge to overcome isolation, alienation, and simple loneliness may drive the urge to have a party, to "festival."

The composer, Gian Carlo Menotti, founder of the Italian and American Spoleto festivals, claimed he drew upon his festivals as a source of renewed personal artistic energy.  He said that he felt his creative life was at an end in his forties, when he turned to the work of bringing life to the village of Spoleto, Italy, using "art" to show the power of art (from remarks made by Menotti at a May 20th, 1988, press conference in Charleston at the opening of the Spoleto Festival U.S.A.).   One of Menotti's reasons for intervening in the affairs of the small Italian village was that he wanted to prove art was not only an after-dinner mint but that it could be the main meal itself, not the soup but the main course. (See interview excerpts that follow, especially Theodore S. Stern and David Rawle.)   Menotti's anecdote illustrates what might be called a "creation myth" or a "story of origin" that emerges over time as a simple story told over and over in the festival programs and in the news media.

Creation Myths

In the few complete histories of the international arts festivals, such as Gallup's Salzburg Festival, a recurring issue is the public questioning of the original idea of the festival. Festival officials and critics frequently ask whether previous, current, and future programming is "true" to the original idea. In Salzburg's case the original idea was to stage a medieval play in front of the scenic town's beautiful cathedral. Today's musical emphasis on Mozart evolved later, although late nineteenth-century festival efforts there did include Mozart. The shape and character of that "idea" remains the core of one of the world's great town art and music festivals. It suggests that such stories of origin, which in this case--and numerous others--emphasize the town's physical beauty as a theater, can provide an access point for understanding the multiple meanings of these unique social institutions in other times and places.

Similar "creation myths" are found in stories of the origin of other festivals, whose actual founding events have been obscured by time, publicity agents, or new masters. "Who cares about the `truth?'" a cynic might ask. "Leave sleeping dogs alone," an investor in property adjacent to Chattanooga's Riverbend festival said to the author during an interview for this book. A practical reply is that some important lesson might be learned by taking a closer look at why and how new social entities emerged from the chaotic "soup" of times past, lessons that might have value when similar choices again will exist. An equally practical reply is that such stories of origin are interesting and pleasurable in themselves as an art form and need no other justification for their telling.

The importance of the text of a creation myth, and its expression in the festival itself and its brochures, is that it functions as a steering device for continuing the festival in the direction its various shapers intended. "Why a festival in Charleston?" The actual answers vary widely. "Well, Mr. Menotti wanted a nice place to have a festival." "Menotti said our city was an art form in itself." "A friend of Menotti's persuaded him to come here." "The National Endowment said to spend tax money on artists in America, not on going to Italy." "Maestro Menotti wanted to show that artists are valuable to society and should be given better treatment." "Art should not be an after-dinner mint but the main meal."  This last statement was the reason most frequently mentioned in the 1986-88 Charleston interviews. It is apparently not recorded anywhere, not even in an informal history, that one powerful local citizen did his best to keep the festival out of Charleston (from Theodore S. Stern recollections, 1988 interview). Possibly this incident is one reason that  no official Spoleto Festival U.S.A. history existed as of 1990.

A deeper probe of Spoleto Festival U.S.A. reveals several complicated stories: a mayor who assumed responsibility for the festival when it appeared doomed; Menotti as a famous artist fighting inexperienced if well-meaning local control of artistic performances; Frances Edmunds, a strong architectural preservationist, who became a strong supporter of Spoleto Festival U.S.A.'s changes. It would have been more probable that some of those Charlestonians most involved, such as the mayor and a college president and a preservationist who had the most to fear from the coming of a new, "foreign," thing, would have been intimidated successfully by the powerful opposition's predictable warnings of harmful effects for the historic community.

From this perspective the presence of a Menotti, an experienced composer and festival artistic director who was until 1993 the principal designer of the festival, suggests a study of the festival's story of origin as a starting point in understanding not only what happened and why, but also what possible meanings this series of events signify. The examples of the written and recollected stories of origin from the Charleston and Chattanooga festivals provide a foundation on which to build more fully developed interpretations of these festivals and their multiple meanings.

Official stories of origin of a festival, and possibly those of similar social structures, can be contradictory in the written and recalled record. The participants often have differing recollections of these emotional times. The records of Charleston's and Chattanooga's festival productions suggest that several true histories of these mythic moments can co-exist without any reconciliation possible. The questions that emerge from this perspective have far-reaching public implications that merit careful consideration.  The unique problems of studying the origin of ritual, or the creation of a cultural practice, require explanation. Both Charleston's Spoleto Festival U.S.A. and Chattanooga's Riverbend Festival have multiple true stories whose meaning and significance are best detected by listening primarily to the unrehearsed voices of several of those key individuals involved at their genesis or others associated with their later stages.

It appears that for these two festivals their stories of origin (or creation myths) can be better derived from transcribed oral history than from written notes or official records that might have been kept before their inception for two reasons. Their founders' interpretations of and feelings about events probably would not have been written down during these periods of rapid change.  It is unlikely a researcher could read mine or the other Riverbend organizers' rough notes or chaotic files and know much of our versions of the festival's story of origin without talking with me or them. It is the combination of written records, recalled events, and conversations that reveal more of the full story of dimly remembered beginnings that may not have seemed worth preserving during their gestation and birth.

In the early belief that much of the story of a festival's founding would be discovered by searching through yellowed letters, scribbled notes, news clippings, and various proposals, an effort was made in early 1988 to review the official Spoleto files for this study. The festival's first chairman, Dr. Theodore S. Stern, was very much interested and supportive in getting Spoleto's history on record. However, according to a telephone conversation with the courteous and supportive general manager, Nigel Redden, in early 1988, the Charleston Spoleto office decided not to open its files from the festival's beginning for my review until they could be "vetted."

 I had explained in a January 1988 letter to Dr. Stern, a former president of the College of Charleston:   "Carmen Kovens [associate director] was very helpful and was to discuss my request to review the early Spoleto files with Nigel Redden and let me know by Feb. 12 [1988] whether I can see these materials. We discussed some of the conditions for access to what might be sensitive documents, my own thinking being that the academic integrity essential for a credible historical record suggested that free access was the best policy. However, I have no interest in private, confidential personnel and financial matters, only information that bears on the struggle of ideas, philosophies, opinions--such as the Hugh Lane and Nella Barkley withdrawal. There should be no need, then, for anyone to check the early records prior to my study of them. At best, they would corroborate the sequence of events and the names of persons involved during the festival's beginning."

Kovens, who sent a copy of the important Hugh Lane resignation letter, replied that while there was no basic objection to such a review, the staff would have to take the time to review the files and remove any confidential material.  By this time the broader implications of the interview with Stern in January 1988, along with a conversation with college archivists, had shifted my thinking to the contribution that oral histories from those most involved in 1975-77 could make to the exploratory nature of festival study.  Increasingly, it was becoming apparent from the Chattanooga and Charleston cases that original intentions could be masked by later documents written for political, economic, or even personal purposes.

There were other potential sources of information. The College of Charleston library archival staff had the papers of Stern, its former president, who also was the first festival board chairman.  But looking through these few records with the archive staff, we discovered to their surprise and mine that little related to the Spoleto Festival. The archive director explained that several proposals had been made to move the festival records to the college library but to date the festival office had not responded. At his request, I agreed to mention this request to the festival office and did so, but no specific response was made to the library archivist's suggestion. It was clear that few of the important private records were available, or within reach, without exhaustive, expensive investigation.

As the story of the festival's creation emerged from conversations with Stern and others at the festival office, as well as from a review of the few public and college library records, I felt that the scholarly task of this work could be served better by taking the first step of relying on the transcribed thoughts of Stern, Wadsworth, and other knowledgeable past and present festival officials. Also, following standard journalistic practice, I felt that if I had reviewed the festival's confidential files under a general agreement not to disclose protected information, then professional ethics also would prevent using this same material if it were disclosed during the interviews. The need to protect sensitive financial and personnel records is understandable. Possibly a later study will use the available "vetted" materials to compile complete historical studies similar to those of Salzburg and Stratford.  In retrospect, it seems clear "vetted" histories of powerful cultural and very public institutions that not only mirror but also shape community life do not properly serve the public interest. It is the case, however, that files I kept as an initiator of the Chattanooga festival are open to anyone and can be used as an indicator of the value of such primary source material. Certainly, however, in analyzing either festival, I would not include any material that would harm anyone as an individual.  It was a request for a history of Charleston's festival that revealed the absence of such a record. 

However, because serious disagreements over purposes, policy, and methods will always exist, the general community welfare merits an accessible public record.  In 1999, the news media and Congress have forced the Atlanta Olympic organizing committee, headed by Billy Payne, to open its closed records for investigation of possible improper gifts.  Festivals such as this are essentially a blend of public and private institutions, and the sunshine of public access is often the best guardian against personal and public error as well as the best way, as Wadsworth notes below, to learn from our mistakes. To insure complete public access and scholarly availability, it is my hope to locate or establish a secure archival center for the festival materials gathered since 1980, when I made my first visit to Spoleto Charleston and to Salzburg, Austria. 

Later chapters that describe the founding of Chattanooga's Riverbend Festival in 1980-82 are based on the story of the creation of the non-profit group, Friends of the Festival, Inc., which was established to sponsor the festival. My experience as first president of this organization provides the primary source materials for these events.  As one of the founders of Chattanooga's festival, I had kept many of the notes, files, and papers that ordinarily would have been lost. These are available to other researchers. No doubt new documents will come to light as others involved in these historic moments in community life have different stories to tell. However, the evidence presented in this study is as full and complete as constraints of time, funds, accessible records, and of course memory permit.  

The process of bringing a festival to life, from inception to booking a place to choosing a director, is a complex and convoluted path. The complexity of the task promises that there will be many versions of the stories told and that these views will often clash. Although Menotti's viewpoint was not possible to obtain due to his limited time during the festival or to my limited time and resources afterwards, what follows are a number of versions of the birth of the Spoleto Festival, USA, in Charleston, SC. These oral interviews are lengthy but provide the concrete details on which more the general ideas about festivals to follow are constructed.

The founder of the Chautauqua Institution at Jamestown, New York, which is a unique festival summer space, has said that "Chautauqua is a place, an ideal, and a force."  These three elements, at various conceptual levels, are taken as the major categories for this exploration of the idea of festival.  A sense of the thought represented by these three categories--place, ideal, force--and their interrelationships can be gleaned from the written and recorded words of a those visionaries involved in the creation and evolution of Charleston's Spoleto Festival U.S.A. 

The Origin of Charleston's Spoleto Festival U.S.A. 

Remarks of Dr. Theodore S. Stern, Spoleto Festival U.S.A.'s first board chairman, 1988 (approved by Stern and signed March 1988).

A festival reflects the culture of the times, particularly a comprehensive festival such as Spoleto. It reflects all of the different art forms in existence at that time. We have modern dance, classical dance, opera, chamber music, theater, mime--all the existing art forms.

I think it's a matter of interest and history to record that the festival was founded by Gian Carlo Menotti, who was responsible for and the founder of the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. The reason for that festival is an interesting story. When Menotti was a student at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, his family, who were influential and of affluence in Italy, said, "Oh, don't go to America because that is a wasteland of culture and you'll never learn anything over there." His mother, who is the driving force for art in the family, discouraged him. But he set his mind on going to Curtis. When he arrived at Curtis Institute, he found that their conception of art and artists in America was completely wrong. He found greater artists in greater numbers and a greater interest on the part of the people than he had in Italy. He said that if I ever attain any prominence, I want to present these young American artists to the world leaders and the culture vultures of Europe. I want them to be able to show their talent to those people and have those people see how talented the Americans are. I guess history will record that from his experience at the Curtis and his desire to compose and his coming in contact with so many young people that he received financial support as well as encouragement from people like Toscanini, Mrs. Edward Bok, the McElheneys, people of Philadelphia who were at that time the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Astors of Pennsylvania. They were the core that provided him with the funds necessary to take American artists to Italy.

From that point on he had to find a place to have this festival. It wasn't the cities because he says, and he said this is true of Charleston as well, that the city must be an art form in itself, that people should walk around the city as well as enjoy the festival, and they tie in together; they're in concert and in harmony. He chose a small town in Umbrian Province, Spoleto, which historians tell us was where Hannibal crossed the Alps and the big battle was at Spoleto. Here is an old, old town that was bypassed by the Twentieth century. It has its original Etruscan walls, original forum, theaters, opera houses; it was the seat of culture of the Umbrian Province. It was destitute, economically completely depressed; people were leaving; there was no industry. The culture which could be presented was nonexistent. So he selected this really depressed area, yes, like a theater that had been empty for many years. It's been the saving grace for Spoleto, Italy, and the Italian government; in fact, the festival in Italy is completely supported by the Italian government. Their budget exceeds the budget of the U.S. festival, and contributions are received from the federal government, the province, and the town of Spoleto, which is now thriving economically and culturally. That was the start. He called it the Festival of Two Worlds, trying to join the culture of Europe--not necessarily Europe--and the United States, the Festival dei Due Mondi.

The United States National Endowment of the Arts in Washington approached Menotti--I believe this was when Nancy Hanks was the head of the National Endowment, and suggested that he establish a Spoleto Festival in the United States. At the behest of the then consultant, I believe, to the National Endowment, Walter Anderson, Menotti was placed in charge of trying to develop a plan to present the festival in the United States. The general feeling of the bureaucracy in Washington was that no festival existed in the Southeastern United States and that this festival should be in the Southeastern part of the United States. Menotti was asked to select a city where this festival could find a home. Walter Anderson prepared a list of several Southern cities, starting with Richmond, Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Charleston, Atlanta--all the way to Miami to Houston and New Orleans. Menotti's agent at the time was Priscilla Morgan, who was very closely associated with Menotti, either as his manager or agent, but I think she worked for Menotti to develop Spoleto, Italy. He asked her to visit these various communities and to pick out those he should look at. She asked the musical director, who was Christopher Keene at the time, to help her in this quest to find a suitable location.

There seems to be some confusion over who actually was responsible for, not the selection of Charleston because Menotti was going to make the final decision, but as to how the Morgan/Keene team would be suitably introduced to the community and its citizens. Alison Harwood, who is a relatively recent newcomer to Charleston, claims that she knew Priscilla Morgan and she told her about Charleston. The fallacy in that one is that I don't think she knew Charleston too well herself. Countess Alicia Paolozzi, who was one of Menotti's initial sponsors in the festival in Italy and who owns two homes in Spoleto and one in Rome, she was a Spaulding of Boston, Massachusetts, recognized for their generosity to the arts, was another person who says she got Morgan and Keene interested in Charleston. However, subsequently, the Countess bought a plantation in Charleston, owns several condominiums in Charleston, and has been member of the board and generous donor of the Festival Foundation and Spoleto USA. She went to school with Frances Edmunds, who is from an old Charleston family and is recognized as the foremost preservationist in the area and perhaps in the United States, having been a member of the board of directors of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and has received numerous awards. She also feels that she was one of the people who was responsible, having visited the festival in Italy a year before anybody else in Charleston knew of the Spoleto Festival.

Then, Mrs. Rufus Barkley, I'll call her Nella for short, became extremely interested and she headed up a committee to encourage people like the National Endowment, Priscilla Morgan, and Christopher Keene to select Charleston as a place for the festival. She had various committees, of which I was chairman of what you might call a logistics committee. She had a fundraising committee and because of his great influence and political power as well as economic power, Hugh Lane was elected chairman of this committee to try and get the festival here. Frances Edmunds h visited the festival in Spoleto, Italy, in 1975. In 1976, Hugh Lane, Nella Barkley, and Mr. and Mrs. Tom Stevenson went to Spoleto to see really what it was all about.

A matter of record is that when Hugh Lane returned to Charleston, he said he would have nothing more to do with it. He did not want to expose the citizens of Charleston to people dancing without clothes and felt that the people who would come to Charleston would be depraved, queers--I think he used those words--and he offered to return all the money that people had donated to this effort. And he did. I think he returned something like a hundred thousand dollars to people because he had misled them. In addition, Hugh Lane said that the festival was not economically feasible and would never be a success. This is part of a letter that he put in writing, which he subsequently has regretted but not denied. He was chairman of the board of the C&S bank. But he was the head of everything here, head of the United Way, you know, he was number one citizen, and he went all over the state to generate these contributions. He does speak to me now, but he'll never admit the festival has done any good. However, the largest contribution we receive from any bank has come from his bank, which he no longer heads, and I don't think banks give money away without getting something in return.

It was at this time that Nella Barkley and Hugh Lane went to a Festival Foundation board meeting in New York, which Frances Edmunds attended. I can only give hearsay information, but I do know that prior to the meeting Mrs. Barkley wrote a letter to the board saying that she would assume the responsibilities of general manager for $20,000 a year, but she wanted full authority, full responsibility for the operation of the festival. That letter was copied to the chairman of the Festival Foundation, who at that time was Ernest Hillman, and Menotti. Frances Edmunds advised me that she had never been more embarrassed at a meeting because they just raked Nella over the coals and showed no respect for Hugh Lane and Menotti was particularly obnoxious, and said that he was not going to give up any authority, that she wasn't worth the $20,.000 she was asking. They left, bitter--this was in September of 1976, maybe August.

The National Endowment for the Arts must have come up with the idea in 1975; they came to visit in 1975, when I was president of the College of Charleston, and I took them around and showed them all the facilities of the College. They were particularly impressed with the fact that the College and community were working in concert and were enthusiastic about the festival. That was probably in the spring or early summer of '75. This ties in with Frances Edmunds' going over to Spoleto, the visit would have been before she went.

I guess I've gotten ahead of myself with the administrative part, because they had selected Charleston. Going back to the time Christopher Keene and Priscilla Morgan came to Charleston, we gave them the red carpet treatment, this was in the spring of '75. I know that Christopher Keene stayed at the Barkley's home on Sullivan's Island. Priscilla Morgan was placed in a suite at the new Mills House Hotel. I think all in all we impressed them very favorably but they were also impressed with various other cities. They returned, and I guess you can get these details from Menotti, to Menotti and told him of the pros and cons of the various alternatives.

Now to revert back to that meeting. Menotti was named composer-in-residence and provided quarters, a house, on the campus, for him and his entourage. As a matter of interest, the first year of the festival, I personally moved with my family to my home on the Isle of Palms and let Menotti occupy the president's house at the College of Charleston. These perks were extremely important. College vehicles were at his disposal. I had seen that having this festival associated with the College of Charleston would be a tremendous advantage to the College; in fact, I think the festival was responsible for the development of our fine arts center. Menotti was equally impressed with the Dock Street Theater, Middleton Plantation, the closeness of the beaches, and I made arrangements for him to have a house during the festival at Seabrook Island, which his son occupied most of the time. He would go over on weekends, he loved tennis, and play tennis. He is very active during the festival, and has appointments every minute--I would say 18 hours a day, particularly when he directs an opera. Without the College, there would have been no festival, because of the housing situation and the logistic support. Menotti loved the idea of the College, he thought the festival should be near an educational institution, he loved the idea of the historic part of Charleston, and he loved the idea that the Mayor was so enthusiastic and the community that for which he spoke.

Now to revert back to that meeting in New York, which was August of 1976. Nella and Hugh Lane returned to Charleston. Nella wrote a letter resigning and Hugh Lane reiterated his position that he was not going to subject Charlestonians to be a breeding place for undesirables. Now this withdrawal by Nella and Hugh Lane would have been catastrophic had not the Mayor called Menotti and other members of the board of the Festival Foundation and asked them to meet in Charleston.

I recall the meeting extremely well because it was held in the President's house at the College of Charleston in September of 1976. The Mayor had asked if it could be held in the President's house at the College. At that meeting, which was a very vitriolic meeting, in which Mr. Lane walked out with Mrs. Barkley, the Mayor stated that he was convinced that the Spoleto Festival would do a great deal for Charleston, that he disagreed but appreciated the views of the dissidents. He turned to me and he said, "Will you take over?" I said I would never say no to him and I've never turned down a challenge. At that meeting was Frances Edmunds, who did not walk out, and Charles D. "Pug" Ravenel. He was a quarterback at Harvard football and was a presidential White House fellow and he ran for governor, except that he was disqualified since he hadn't lived here long enough, even though he was born here.

The basic question was, "Will there be a festival in Charleston?" And I must say, it was the unanimous view of both the members of the Festival Foundation board and the few Charlestonians that were there that we should have it, and that we should have it next year in 1977. That gave us nine months to prepare for it.

I sort of have a history. The College of Charleston, when I became president, had 432 enrolled. When I left 10 years later, we had 5200 enrolled. The College was bankrupt and I just like that sort of thing. Similarly the Navy Supply Center was just another supply department of a shipyard and I'd been there and it changed to the third largest supply center in the world. I retired from that job to become college president.

Well, you can imagine the tasks that were required. Had I not had the resources of the College to help us, we never would have been able to get through that first year. I thought the most important thing that had to be done was to get a general manager. I was still president of the College, which was my primary responsibility. So we let it be known we were looking for a general manager and advertised it or something. But I remember we had a very good prospect; her name was Christine Reed. She had been assistant at the Marlboro Festival; she had been in charge of Casal's Festival in Puerto Rico. She was from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and was available. She was anxious to leave.  I went to New Orleans with someone, but I can't remember who I took, to interview her. Then, satisfied, I asked her to come to Charleston.

By December of 1976, she was employed effective Jan. 1. With my wife's complete concurrence, she moved into our home until she could find a place of her own. I had a faculty member who was leaving in February, so she took over the apartment of that faculty member. Office space was catch as catch can. We moved the Spoleto office from pillar to post, whenever there was space available or we needed more space. Initially, she started next to my office, then we moved to a building on St. Phillips Street, which has subsequently been replaced by the fine arts center. Then we moved to Meminger School annex, which had been closed. And finally, to a building owned by the College and occupied by the State Employment Security Commission, which is currently the location of the Early Childhood Education Center. Then we moved to our present location in Marion Square, I think, when Jim Kearny became general manager.

The first festival was one of the most successful festivals. We had the Zulu Dancers, which had appeared at Spoleto, Italy, before, and they were a tremendous hit. We had a dance gala, which featured Alicia Alonzo and Gudenov--I wish I could remember all that, I'll have to go and get that. The Zulu dancers and the finale at Middleton Gardens, with fireworks, stand out in my mind as most memorable. At the finale we had the orchestra at the finger lakes and we had the 1812 Overture, and we had the Citadel cadets re-enact the final shelling of Moscow actually firing their cannon, which was followed by a magnificent fireworks display.

To make this thing a artistic success, a social success, and a financial success, certain elements were essential. And Charleston fitted in beautifully. Every opening for every event had a major social party given by a Charleston resident in their home. And these historic homes were open. Some of the parties had four or five hundred people; and most of these homes are beautiful and historic. We paid a great deal of attention to VIPs and contributors. We had at the opening ceremonies a major speaker with the governor and the mayor always attending and some extraordinary event, surprising the audience. One of these was the Flying Wallenders, a circus tightrope group, and we had them go from City Hall over a tightrope to the Federal Building. We always have had puppets, and brass quintets, also singing stars like Esther Hines singing the Star Spangled Banner.

Now, what makes the festival so successful?  In three words, Gian Carlo Menotti. His ability, number one, to direct, his knowledge of all of the arts--he always gets the visual artists to do the poster. This year we have a whole Larry Rivers exhibit, and he got Rivers to do the poster for the U.S. and Italy for 1988. The only poster ever done by Henry Moore, the sculptor in England, was made for Spoleto USA, because of his friendship with Menotti. So we have a Henry Moore poster, he's never done a poster. But we have some posters today that are invaluable. I'm the only one who has the first poster from Italy; this is the only one known to exist. Somebody sent this to me, though I have no idea who it is--isn't it something? Menotti says he doesn't have that first poster.

When you start, you don't know what to keep. I'm throwing things out everyday. We didn't know what would happen. Hell, we had the leading citizen of Charleston say it could never succeed. But Mayor Riley was just elected to his fourth term, and his opposition ran against Spoleto in 1987, saying that money should be going for the homeless and so forth. But they forgot how much it brings in and how little it costs from the local area.

Now who were our big supporters? And this is something that I think would help you a great deal. Our biggest support right from the beginning was the local newspaper, the Post-Courier, and its publisher, Peter Manigault. The name I'll give you is Frank Jarrell, the art critic, who can go their files, their morgue, and dig up all the old stories, which could be verifying all this that I'm telling you about the history. I remember that meeting that we had at the president's house, if you want the humor in it: My wife was sitting outside the dinning room where we had our meeting. She looked out of the window and saw all these TV cameras and reporters outside the house; she stuck her head out and said, "Are you waiting for white smoke or black smoke?" But it was all over the press. They caught Hugh Lane and Nella Barkley leaving and naturally they were waiting to see what was going to happen. The Mayor came out and said that I had agreed to be the chairman and to take over and there was going to be a Spoleto.

Then the job was getting the money to finance it. After the newspaper, one of the big supporters was the Lila Wallace Foundation in New York, the Reader's Digest Foundation; Alice Tulley; all the local banks. I believe our budget for the first year was around $700,000. When you consider that earned income only provides 45 percent of your income, you realize how much money we had to raise. One thing Hugh Lane brought up in his letter is that he was afraid that Spoleto USA would be used to raise funds for Spoleto, Italy. Actually, Festival Foundation raised funds of its own for Spoleto Italy, which at that time was about $300,000. So what we had was the contributors to Spoleto Italy to contribute to Spoleto USA. As a matter of interest, the Festival Foundation contribution to Italy was not money; it was to send the American artists--the orchestra, the Westminster Choir, the chamber musicians--to Italy and to get them back and to pay their per diem. Contrary to what Mr. Lane had prognosticated, the contribution of Festival Foundation has been reduced to $100,000 or less, with the major contributions coming to the U.S. The Wallace Foundation used to contribute to Italy; now it contributes to the U.S. Alice Tulley still gives $20,000 a year to Italy, but it doesn't come anywhere near supporting chamber music. She doesn't give anything here.

After Christine Reed came, I had to help because she knew festivals but she didn't know people and I had to get a tremendous number of volunteers, fund raisers, hospitality committees. I had to arrange for the theaters, the Mayor was a tremendous help, you see. There was a crisis everyday, and I guess I'm alive today because I was able to shed those things. But I think I've always felt that for every problem there are solutions; the correct thing is to identify them. There's usually more than one solution, too; there's always a problem, one problem, but there are a lot of ways you can solve it. That's my philosophy.

Menotti is very mercurial. I was very close with Menotti, and we still maintain a very close personal relationship. I just came from the christening of his grandson. His son married "Happy" Rockefellers' (Mrs. Nelson A.) daughter; the christening was at the Rockefeller estate in Tarrytown, N.Y. There were a few of his old friends there, and very few new friends, but the whole Rockefeller family. We've never received any support from them. We have received support from the Ford Foundation. Right at the beginning the Ford Foundation was a big help.

You know, an interesting thing I think is that I was the president at first and Menotti the chairman; then later on I became the chairman and he became the founder and chairman emeritus. Replacing me I had Jack Kessler, who developed Seabrook Island, and we used facilities at Seabrook a great deal. He always would provide housing for Menotti and some of the people who came with him, and for VIPs. Kiawah also was a strong supporter; they used to give us money but they also gave us a very big dinner for the board and for the VIPs the night before the opening of Spoleto. Subsequently Wild Dunes has taken it up; Wild Dunes gives our jazz gala.

During those first months of 1977, were you to contact some of the board of the College, a lot of them felt I was spending too much time on Spoleto, but I could see the benefits of it for the College. And now I think they realize I was right. The festival had a great deal to do with the growth of the College. Certainly it was responsible for the development of the fine arts center. For example, we had the Guarneri Quartet down for Spoleto, and I talked them into coming back to give a concert at the College the following year for I think four concerts.

I don't know what the records will show. If you ask me, and I leave myself out of it, the responsibility for initially setting up Spoleto fell on the Mayor and the College, on both of our willingnesses to never say never and it couldn't be done.

We've never been able to bring the group opposed back in because of the tremendous animosity between Nella and Menotti. Menotti tried to make up to her once when they were on a plane, and she said, "Never, never talk to me again." I think it's bitterness because she had a chance and she's seen the success it's become.

You get this thing going and then come back with the questions you'll develop. You might find some of my statements are not corroborated by others, or that there is a difference and I can tell you why and my impressions. I am very anxious to historically put this on record. I've told everybody how important it is.

Let me tell you a little story to put some humor in this. People have asked me: "How did you get interested in the arts?" and I said, it's very, very simple. I got interested in the arts by ear. My mother would take me by the ear to Walter Damrosch's Young People's Symphony; she would take me by the ear to Ernest Schelling's music; she would take me by ear to the Metropolitan Opera in New York and we sat in a box by Gatti Cazaza; she would take me by ear to Schubert's Theater; she would take me by the ear to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  So I say I got interested in the arts by ear. Now that's a bit of humor but it's true. I think that's why today I feel so strongly that if we would expose the young people, just expose them to art, it'll show up later on. And if you expose them to the arts when they're tempted by drugs or alcohol or things like that, they'll have an outlet for their energies. They'll be interested in reading, in visual arts, in music. I drive up regularly to North Carolina to my farm and I always put on the public radio because I love to listen to the music. I appreciate also the fact that we all go through periods, like I went through the period with the jazz and that sort of stuff, but classical music always remains. I don't object to the people who like the rock music and all that sort of stuff, and the country music. In fact, we have had country music at the festival, we have jazz at the festival.

About the beginning of the festival, it all depends on what your goals are in life. I've always told young people to never set material goals, because you can never achieve them, because you're always changing them. And if you can set your goal as helping others, you will be happier and you'll make other people happier. And the only way to be happy in this world is to have other people happy. And when I see the joy and the pleasure that people get from this festival, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I've come close to achieving what I set out to do. Does that make sense? I tell my own children not to set material goals.

Taking my life as a military person, I'm a devoted American; I love my country. I see its faults but I see its greatness too. And at the College I could see the opportunity to help young people. And in the festival, I see the opportunity to expose a large number of people to something which will be a joy to them and make their life worthwhile.

Charleston was the cultural center of colonial times. And we're just returning it to its former peak condition. The first theater was in Charleston, the first opera in the U.S. was heard in Charleston--there were innumerable firsts, which I think it would be important to look at. I think it can be an educational and a cultural center; education and culture go together.

I think the fact that Charleston itself is so unique, that I wanted to see a festival here to match it, not just another festival. And this could contribute to the well being of our community. And the more I saw of it...let me tell you about a story. I received about the second or third festival a letter from London, from a lady and her husband who had attended the Spoleto Festival and said, "We have just returned from Beirut, Salzburg, Edinburgh, and your festival is second to none. And I enclose herewith a copy of a review in the London Times." I was so touched by that letter that I wrote her back and told her it was unique to receive such a letter and invited her to let me know anytime she was in Charleston. She came here and she bought one of the most beautiful houses and restored it at a cost of $400,000. That woman is still a support of Spoleto, although her husband died. Her name is Denk and her house is located at 15 Meeting Street. Whether that letter would be up in the festival office, I don't know, I certainly don't have it anymore.

You be surprised at the number of people who have come to Charleston as a result of Spoleto, and the number of industries that have made their headquarters here because of the festival. Let me give you an example. The chairman of the board of General Foods, we got them very enthusiastic about the festival, gave us $25,000, and General Foods was just bought out by Philip Morris. He's no longer chairman of the board but he just bought a plantation here in Charleston. Philip Morris gives us $25,000. And General Foods still gives us money. You know who one of our biggest supporters is right now...AT&T. Exxon used to be a very big contributor but they slowed down. We have got different people and groups that support us. Last year without even asking for it, Getty sent us a $15,000 contribution.  He had been here. We get Dupont, Amoco, General Dynamics. Dupont gives because Jefferson, who is chairman of the board, is a very good friend of Peter Manigault's and they have a plant here. General Dynamics used to give us very generously and used to sponsor the finale, but Roger Lewis, the former chairman of the board, was a personal friend of mine--he's now retired--but they had a plant here.

Previously "festival" to me meant just trying to fundraise. When you talk Spoleto, they say you know that's a different kind of festival. Number one, it's an international festival; number two, we're not rushing to get Pavarotti, Domingo, or other luminaries--but Menotti has had the ability to select young people who are going to be the Pavarotti's and the Domingo's. People know that they can expect something unusual, different.  The Spoleto orchestra--we have 900 auditions, the biggest job of the musical director is to audition. He goes to Curtis, Julliard, Eastman, Bloomington, San Francisco, Dallas. For 90 places he auditions 1200 people. We have, I think, the greatest orchestra and they're all kids. It gives them an opportunity to expose themselves. Where did Yo Yo Ma get his start? Right here at the chamber music. Emanuel Ax? Here. Look at the international recognition. Menotti's ability to select these people, at least, young singers.... And it's different; they don't know what opera is going to be shown but they know it's going to be different. He's very careful about who directs them, produces them, the designer. Dance, no one knows what's going to be there but they know it's going to be different. And that they most probably will never see it again. The festival meant to me what it meant to Menotti, and I didn't know the extent of it, it meant an opportunity to expose young people, give them an opportunity to show their ability. That's what I thought it was, but I did not know the diversity.

I've been asked about starting a festival many, many times. It comes down to this. You need a Menotti, who's so unusual. He's the only person I know who knows all the arts. I mean, you talk about Leonard Bernstein, what does he know about visual arts? He knows music. Menotti directs, he's a director, producer--he's a genius, and that's why we have a problem in trying to decide what happens after Menotti. We have a planning committee working on that right now. He wants to have an assistant that he can train, but we don't think that will work. I myself am interested, I like the idea myself, but speaking for the board, no. Take somebody like Jerome Robbins and the dance, Charlie Wadsworth and music, someone from California in theater, Beverly Sills in opera--get them as consultants, and have one overall name person to be, not the artistic director but coordinator. Not Kitty Carlyle, see, but somebody who is recognized for interest who could go to a painter, and say, I'd like you to do our poster. Menotti--every orchestra knows him, the theater people know him, the dance people, the opera people, the music people.

Today I'm chairman emeritus of the festival. I think it's dangerous for anybody to be in place too long. I told them at the College I'd be there for ten years. I said to Spoleto, by God I'm getting out. Charlie Way is doing a tremendous job as chairman with Pug Ravenel as president but I don't know if Pug is the right person to be chairman.

Keep in touch with me. I don't have any papers here, most are at the College of Charleston. If I find anything, I'll let you know. I have plenty of blanks about this beginning period; now Susan Sanders told me she has some papers at the College. From '75 to the first festival in '77, right, I think that's the story. No, the idea was not to duplicate the Italian festival, in fact, we've never been able to share productions, which I think is just pathetic. In fact, today I think the only way you can make it financially successful is to share production costs. The opera costs you three to four hundred thousand dollars. If you had Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston, New York, all of them putting one production together and dividing the cost.... Cultural events are not publicly acceptable on television. You have Kennedy Center honors and look at their ratings, even when you honor big name people--Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope and Lena Horne.  (Approved by Stern, March 1988).

The following interviews with Spoleto Charleston officials were conducted in Charleston during the May 1986 festival. The complete responses are based on questions presented in writing to Charles E. Wadsworth, Colin Sturm, Nigel Redden, and David Rawle. None of these persons was requested to approve the transcriptions. Follow-up questions are included as appropriate. The complete list of questions was:

Charles Wadsworth, artistic director and host for the chamber series, was interviewed at the Dock Street Theater between the morning and afternoon chamber music programs on May 31, 1986.

Q: Mr. Wadsworth, how do you see the nature of a festival after ten years of association with Charleston's Spoleto?

A: This is not for broadcast? This is just for your personal use? [Yes, for the dissertation]. I think it would be more helpful to talk about the special nature of the Spoleto Festival apart from most of the other festivals that I've had any sort of intimate acquaintance with.

To understand this festival it's best for us to go back to the early days of the festival in Italy, because the festival has developed in certain ways, it's changed in certain ways, as it moved to this country. It continues in Italy. The two festivals now have very much the same personality in both Spoleto, Italy, and in Charleston. But Menotti, as he set out to present a festival, and for me what made it the most exciting festival that I know about is that he set out to produce a festival which he was very well aware would not be a sure fire hit. He said if I'm going to be like Edinburgh or Salzburg where all I do is bring in great guest artists, well known orchestras presenting repertoire's that they know is going to be successful, this is not something I'm at all interested in. I feel that the festival must be a creative festival, that it must be willing to take chances, it must be willing to accept the fact of failure, and out of this kind of experimentation you're going to get things which are much more exciting in the long run.

So a great many of the festivals throughout the world do this kind thing where it's a set program and you're bringing in well known quantities and you're playing it safe with the repertoire. Gian Carlo from the very beginning was taking chances on artists who were unknown. He was inviting young people such as--going back to 1958-59--Herbert Ross, who was then a choreographer and developed into one of the most important movie directors. He would bring in Roman Polanski, when he was virtually a kid to direct a performance of Lulu, which is an extremely grotesque work with a lot of sexual aberrations going on there. What, you know, better person--[laughs]--for Gian Carlo to have picked than Polanski, who's had his share of problems? But he got Zefirelli to do some of his first directing.

He asked Jerome Robbins to create Ballet USA, which moved Robbins' career very dramatically. He had Luchino Visconte there directing opera, and got an aspect of that career going. And then he picked on a young man who was still in his twenties; he had gotten to know the talent of Thomas Shippers. Tommy was an unknown quantity in Europe; he had just gotten out of Curtis and he brought Tommy in to be the general music director, artistic director, and Gian Carlo functioned as the overall head of the festival.

The theory was that artists such as Tommy could benefit from exposure to a wide European audience and that it could have an international flavor, or that European artists working together with American artists to create new pieces. Many playwrights, for instance, wrote pieces for the festival. The "Indian Wants the Bronx" by Horowitz, which was a wonderful play, introduced Al Pachino to Italian audiences. He was an unknown actor at that point. Shelly Winters came over to do some first performances of some early Tennessee Williams plays. We did the first production of "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore."

Q: An unusual juxtaposing of the known and the unknown, the new and the old?

A: Right. And you had an amazing group of young performers that he brought, hardly an international name among the lot. When he invited me in 1959 to start a series of chamber music concerts in this delicious little seventeenth century theater, which seats about 300 to 350--same as this theater--he said, "I want these concerts to be different. I want you to be sure that you only bring brilliant, gifted young talents to play here, or whatever. And I want you to be sure to find some way that the concerts are informal in nature." At that time, he said to me, "Perhaps there won't be anybody there but myself and a few of the artists working for the festival, but I want to do it anyway. It'll be something in the middle of the day, one hour. I want the concert to be short and perhaps we will eventually have some other people there. But that's not really important. It's really a present for the people of the festival."

And it was true the first few days. We had 20 or 30 people in the audience and it started growing. By the end of the first summer we were getting some nice houses on weekends. The second summer was full on weekends. The third summer we were already getting extraordinary acclaim from everywhere and we were fighting them off. As time went on, it was almost impossible for people to get in. We would have near riots in the lobby. And I would have to come out and speak to the people to try to quite them. Along the way I developed what I think has been an important factor in my end of things in chamber concerts, which made them very different from concerts that went on anywhere else in the world.

I communicated with the people verbally to try to get them into an even more relaxed mood than they might be ordinarily. You have a very important factor in summer festivals particularly in that people are free from work pressures, daily pressures. They're obviously somewhere to have a good time. They're not being locked into a subscription series in New York where they have to fight subways, etc., and they have to go out because they've spent a lot of money and they may rather stay at home and watch the tube or something. So you've got a captive audience, which wants to have a good time. That puts you in a festival situation immediately at an advantage over a normal winter series of concerts.

Q: Is there a feeling of expectation, of release, a carnival atmosphere?

A: Yes, there's an expectation that they're going to enjoy it. Yes, it is that kind of atmosphere. And I wanted to add to that further by getting the people so relaxed that they could open themselves to the performers and to the music and that in turn would create a special feeling among the performers, that they would be able to give in a very free way and enjoy the act of performing.

Q: Doesn't this contrast with the normal framing we would expect of chamber music?

A: Well, it does. I think I've been able to do something of this sort in our regular concerts in New York. I did it in Italy and in Charleston I do it. I have seen people who have no background, no sophistication whatever, come here, like during the first summer, and get hooked. One man, who was very simple--like my father--and on the hottest day would have a vest and a tie and a hat. He came up one day after a concert and said, "I've never heard anything like this before, but this means so much to me I wouldn't miss one of these for anything in the world." That's been my experience.

I don't care whether it's avant-garde or early Baroque or the obvious romantics, I think music and the arts must communicate to people on a gut level and it is not an intellectual pursuit--the enjoyment of chamber music, which is considered by many an elitist form. If the people are uninhibited in their listening, then they are going to be able to take the message that the composer intended. The composer is not really interested in how appreciative people are of the devices they've used in getting their feelings down on paper. So this created a special atmosphere in a festival situation, which already gives you one hand up.

For me, it was an incredible opportunity to find artists who I thought were great and then I started combining things into very unusual ways with instruments, voice, percussion, and all sorts of things that would create stimulation in the listener. When I was able to start using these great young people, I brought people who performed for the very first time in Europe such as Morry Pariah, Shirley Verette, Jesse Norman --you should get a list of artist who have been presented in the chamber music; that's probably available somewhere.

Q: It's been difficult to find archival material on festivals that would make this kind of research possible.

A: We're a real example of that. What happens is that because of the condensation, the time frame, and the amount of work you have to do in that time frame, and everybody has busy lives during the winter, so it's all they can do to get things organized for the festival. And you are working on budgets, you have no money, and people are paid very little, you have the bare number of people who can run the festival. So to have what seems at the time extra people around to keep records....

When I got the job at Lincoln Center in 1969, I wanted to know, and I had already presented hundreds of programs, what had been played. The festivals don't keep these records either. Dozens went on to have great careers, but we don't keep track because it seems like one of those extra things at the time than the day to day work. It's too bad; it would be so helpful. Also, the mistakes that were made every summer--to find out what the mistakes have been and how to correct those mistakes so we don't continue making them.

Q: What would you read to learn about festivals? Is there any professional or academic text on the subject? Suppose that in Chattanooga we wanted a book to tell us about festivals, since we had gotten excited about this one. What would we turn to?

A: Except for a couple of people in administration in Spoleto, I'm the oldest living member. Tommy died. All the early people are gone. I'm the only other artist type who's still with it, and I can rely on memory. What we do have, and this you could have access to, are the big souvenir books, at least for the festival in general. That would give you some indication to what's happening in this country. I'm not sure whether they have here a file which has all the early annual books or not.

Q: That's interesting because a British historian, Roy Strong, studied the official programs of Renaissance festivals, many of which were regarded as art works themselves and preserved. Inigo Jones and other artists of some reputation did them and they were thought important. It strikes me as unfortunate that with all our technology and know-how we're losing the visual record, video and audio tapes aren't being edited and kept.

A: The 15th anniversary of the festival in Italy had a very complete book done of all the participants up to that point. I've got that book in New York. That's got some extremely valuable background showing some of the outstanding things that happened during the first years of the festival.

The festival is unique and different from almost all other festivals because from the very beginning Gian Carlo wanted all of the arts to be represented so that the musicians and the actors could all feed off each other's inspirations and it would bring a certain excitement to my work. One summer he had an extraordinary series of poetry readings, so you had Ferlingetti from the West Coast there, and Kerouac, and Ezra Pound on the same afternoon reading from his works. For me to have Ezra Pound coming in my concert--it can't help but create a electricity, or to see Visconte there in the box. We all found we were exciting each other by what we did. I would go to all the opera rehearsals and the play rehearsals and make a point of being at all that. It gave me a feeling about how when a festival is one where things are being created specifically for the festival, really it makes it unique.

Over the years, Spoleto now is a combination of the conventional festival that you have going on all around the world, where you do bring in certain shows and presentations which are already set, such as this year the National Spanish Ballet, which is an extraordinary thing. But that's a company which could be booked anywhere if the place had enough money. It's fun for the people in Charleston because they probably wouldn't have had a chance to see them.

Q: Does that kind of programming round out Menotti's concept?

A: It's become a way to do a festival and have it be large enough to appeal to all the various disciplines. But at the same time there's a trade off because in the early days you would have three or four different stage presentations, concerts, maybe the poetry readings every day, and a sculpture exhibition around town. We had a extraordinary sculpture exhibition which had works of David Smith, Calder, and Giacometti, and Every Alloway--and the whole town was a great piece by a great contemporary sculpture. But still you would not have anywhere near the activity that you have today, where you have four or five different presentation going on every day of the week.

Q: It's almost as if you reach a critical mass of energy.

A: Well, the only way to keep the ball rolling in the same way that it's been going since we started down here is to have a fair number of things brought in which are pre-made.

The role of artistic director [looking at the author's list of questions]. That's an interesting question because in the early days there really was only Gian Carlo and Shippers. Gian Carlo was 25 years younger--we started in '58 and he's 75 this year. There was a tremendous amount of energy and he wasn't as busy directing opera all over the world, so that his main activities were the festival in Italy and composing. He and Tommy handled it very well and then they put me in charge of the concerts, which was just one small aspect of the festival. But there was an overall artistic view of what was necessary to give a special profile to the festival. That came from Gian Carlo and his imagination, his faith in brilliant young people, and in the creative arts.

Q: His role as artistic director was special?

A: It was. The Spoleto Festival as we know it would not have what we know unless there had been specifically Gian Carlo.

Q: Can an arts festival be carried off specifically without an artistic director?

A: Not successfully. It could be carried off in my mind maybe financially successful venture by a businessman but to me the festival should be much more than that. It should have some very strong artistic point of view that you're trying to get across. I think you need a creative mind to do that. I mean you could find the manager of a major orchestra who could decide this was a successful play on Broadway, let's bring this, and this conductor I've heard was good, we'll have him--you can go down the line and you could put together a festival. You would have an entertaining festival. You could do it.

Whether in the long run you would have the same kind of artistic satisfaction from having attended the festival, from having been involved in it, I would have no interest whatsoever in taking part in a festival which was run by a businessman with just a slight speaking acquaintance with the arts. Those people, that sort, are the kind we want on the board of directors, who can say, "You're the artist. You know what has to be done. We have to raise the money. We know that's what we have to do. We will tell you how much we can raise and how much you have to spend. You can dream and tell us how much you'd like." Then you meet somewhere in the middle.

Q: This is where the dream and the reality come together?

A: Right. Then you come together. Gian Carlo has been throughout the years has been a tough one for business managers to deal with because he has dreamed very big at times with budgets that go way, way out of range. A lot of people get upset. The business managers find they can't handle it, and they jump ship, and we get somebody else. I've seen them come and go and the Peter Principle...some of our fine business managers have gone on to great jobs with important roles at the Washington opera or head of CBS recording, you can go on and on, the arts endowment for dance. Those are three different former directors that come to mind.

Q: But is the artistic director an important focus?

A: It depends on what your aims are. I'm a musician, first of all. I can hear all the best because I live in New York during the regular season. So I can see the point of view if you've got a pretty place, it's nice weather, and so forth, and a good place to listen to music or to see theater, then you could bring in attractions. For me that would have very little interest. I want something that is different from what I get in the normal, everyday life of concert and theater going.

Q: If you were studying festivals, what would be the examples of success and failure?

A: Well, that one in Miami was an example of a good healthy failure. He attempted to put on a festival which involved many different disciplines, all 20th century music, in the middle of the summer in Miami with halls as much as 20 or 30 miles apart. I went down to put together all the 20th century budget. He had a huge budget, and he wound up finally covering his deficits through contributions. But it was a struggle. The prices were too high for people in Miami to pay. There wasn't the basic cultural interest. So it was a matter of the wrong place at the wrong time and with the wrong people.

The ones in this country which are the most successful are the ones which usually lean towards one discipline, rather than all the disciplines, as the Marlborough Festival is only chamber music--and you have gifted young people working with their elders who guide them through and they do wonderful things for a small but devoted audience. The Aspen Festival has an educational aim, which has been a very important part of that festival. But it's a glorious place to be in the summer time and they have wonderful distinguished performers. They have a little opera but mostly symphony orchestra and a few chamber concerts. So that festival is restricted. Tanglewood is a great festival but it's all orchestral stuff and its repertoire they've been playing in the regular year; but it's a beautiful place to sit on the lawn and listen to the music.

Q: Does the nature and character of the festival shift according to place and setting?

A: Yes, the place is terribly important in terms of summer festivals.

Q: Are there other festivals like Spoleto?

A: In this country there are not, which really sets it apart because most of the--well, what happens in a place like Tanglewood is that you'll have the Boston Symphony with its great guest artists. Then a couple miles away you have a great summer theater, which is not connected. But people in the area can enjoy various things and have some variety.

Q: What worldwide would be equivalent to Spoleto?

A: Go the Edinburgh Festival or some of the Salzburg Festival and you get then more the kind of festival we are doing here. There at Edinburgh you have, well I don't know the leadership there, but at Salzburg you have Karajan, who is an extraordinarily strong personality who has been guiding that one for a number of years. That's usually the case.

Q: What advice would you have for someone writing a doctoral dissertation on the general topic of festivals? or the topic of festival in general?  What might be there to discover?

A: Since festivals are cropping up everywhere, since we got started at Marlborough there must be hundreds of chamber music festivals in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Euray, Colorado--all of these little burgs are developing special chamber festivals; Santa Barbara has one. It's very exciting and everybody is interested in doing it. But the know how is very limited.

What you're doing could be tremendously valuable. I don't know of any other similar study in the 25 years or so I've been involved. If you could follow this last thing we've been talking about--why some festivals have succeeded and why some have failed--and get the factors together involving naiveté on the part of local people regarding board structure, naiveté in areas about what is necessary in terms of giving to the arts, that it is not a profit making venture, that the serious classical music world is never going to make money.

They look at Pavarotti and Sills and think that's where it's at, and that's not. The cost of putting on Menotti's opera "The Saint of Bleeker Street"--you can't imagine what it cost, it is a glorious production. There's an example of creativity at its highest with Gian Carlo directing that opera with its beautiful design and with all young singers you've never heard of singing so beautifully. The idea of Gian Carlo to have an orchestra made up of young students or people who have just graduated--these hundred people have been called from student bodies all over the country, that to me is one of the exciting things about this festival. There's not that kind of chance taking in other places. I hope you can see it because it would be very illuminating to see what Gian Carlo has done with people with very little experience.

Q: What could I contribute in this study?

A: You could contribute by collecting--I think it's incredible--and gathering information about the types that have gotten into this crazy world and how and why they have been successful, or why they have failed.

Q: Almost as an art form itself?

A: Yes.

Nigel Redden, general manager of Charleston's Spoleto, was interviewed May 31, 1986, five months after he arrived from a position with the National Endowment for the Arts.

Q: How was the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. started?

A: The thing that I think is crucial about the history of this festival is that it started for an artistic idea, which was basically to give Italian audiences a sense of what American artists were doing. And that was the Festival of Two Worlds. You can't know the history of the Spoleto Festival without looking at the history of the Festival of Two Worlds. That was started because Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian who was trained in America but was told by many Italians that America was a cultural wasteland. He wanted to show to Italians that it was not a cultural wasteland. He also wanted to create a kind of sort of artist's colony, that it very much was about artists, artists working together and artists seeing each other's work--that was very much an aspect of the festival.

I think it left from that pretty quickly, that is, it became much more a festival about performances, a festival about doing specific events but always the mix was important. And the mix meant that someone who came to play in a play could also see an opera; someone who came to the opera could see a dance performance, and so on. When the festival came to America, it came as a transport but it came with that commitment to artists remaining, although obviously it was no longer a question of proving things to an Italian audience because it was an American audience. It continued to try to do some things that were of interest to a broad group of first rate artists. There also was some economic development, which was an issue here in Charleston.

But I think what distinguishes this festival from other festivals, or rather from some other festivals that were started by cities, is that it started with an artistic idea rather than a cultural development idea or even with a place idea. It was very much about artists and it happened to be Charleston rather than:  Let's take Charleston and try to figure out what we can do to make something exciting happen in Charleston.

Q: What other types of festivals are there? And what other reasons, such as the place idea, lie behind festivals?

A: Well, the place idea was imposed to some extent on the Festival of Two Worlds, on Gian Carlo Menotti, by the National Endowment for the Arts, which suggested he look to the South rather than to the Hudson River area, where he had initially thought of looking. That is, he had initially thought of looking to Caramoor or some of those places up the Hudson. But the people at the NEA said, Look, there's so many festivals around up there, there's so much arts activity going on outside of New York, that you shouldn't go there; there's no point in putting a festival there. You should go to someplace where there aren't things. And Charleston is sort of ideal in that it has an enormous cultural history. That is the first ballet company in America started here in 1790; the first ballet ever done in America was done here in 1734; the first opera ever done in America was done here; the first theater in America was here--I mean every city has the first something but this has a lot of cultural firsts.

I think one of the other very key things about the city is that it happens to be architecturally beautiful; that is, that this is a place that is an appropriate setting for a festival that celebrates those areas of human imagination that are concerned with beauty and with some of the intangibles of the human spirit. So, that is why it was started here.

That's my interpretation. There are other interpretations that are at least as valid, and probably more valid in that I was not involved in this, and others were involved. That is, I think the mayor would have a different tale; I think some of the board members would have a different tale; I think Gian Carlo might have a different tale.

The real strength of this festival is for better or worse people have agreed that Gian Carlo Menotti is the artist director, that it has an artistic focus, and that he should be in charge of this thing. It doesn't mean that we don't make compromises, that we do everything that he wants. It doesn't mean that he's happy with everything that we do, by no means. But it does mean that there is a common...a court of last resort...he makes compromises, he does things that he doesn't want to do but he's enough of a realist and enough of an artist to keep the whole thing going.

Q: What is the role of the artistic director?

A: It is the coherence question, that the artistic director, that is, a single mind, can give the festival a coherence that it might not have otherwise. And I think that's very important. Not necessarily that an artistic director has to be involved in every aspect of what's going on. In some ways, an artistic director is very frustrated. I think that a festival, in order to be significant, has to have some idea. Usually the easiest way to embody that idea is through the artistic director. And it should be an artistic idea, not an extraneous idea. If it's economic development, than it becomes an economic festival. If it's to fill concert halls, then it becomes a booking festival. Which all can have their own place and can be good in their own ways.

I think a festival that has an artistic sense has an opportunity to be better than the other because it's serving. I mean there's a kind of integrity that comes with that that can't come with something that has non-artistic motives but none the less achieves them through the arts. I mean the arts become a means rather than end. That's my feeling about an artistic director. I don't think it would have happened without an artistic director here. There was talk early on about doing it without any association with the Festival of Two Worlds, without Gian Carlo Menotti, and frankly I don't think you'd be here, I don't think you'd have heard of it. There are 120 festivals in South Carolina; have you heard of any of them...maybe you have, I don't want to speak ill of the others, but I hadn't heard of them until I came here.

Q: What will happen after Gian Carlo is no longer connected with the festival?

A: That's a difficult question. Gian Carlo's presence...someone has to be here, and it will be difficult for someone else. And I don't know in what way. I don't think Gian Carlo will be replaced. And I don't think there will be an attempt to replace him...qua him. I think there will be an attempt to have a new artistic director, or I think it should be an artistic director rather than an artistic directorette. I think we'll be a very different festival. I think it will be more different than the Met was with Bing and the new director, the stockbroker person. Because I think that this is more malleable than most organizations...it really can be very different from one year to the next.

There are few things that are fixed about it, except that we're going to stay in Charleston. We're going to be a summer festival. We're probably not going to be over 17 days long. We're going to be high arts, whatever that means, and that can mean jazz or circuses or a lot of other things. But it means the arts. I don't know what it would be like after Gian Carlo. I think Gian Carlo sees festivals as a...I think he's an impresario, that's what he feels his role in life is...I think he's an extraordinary impresario. He's been an extraordinarily successful composer, but I think he could have been a hell of lot more so if he hadn't done these festivals.

Q: Why has Menotti put his energy into festivals?

A: I don't know. I'm sure he's been asked that. He doesn't plan to write a book. There are books about him and there probably will be more; I think there have been two biographies at this point, maybe three.

Q: Would you say Menotti is regarded as the most knowledgeable person in the world on the subject of festivals?

A: No, no...I wouldn't say he is regarded as that...and I'm not even sure he is that.  I couldn't answer that.

Q: How do the three Spoleto Festivals compare?

A: The one coming up in Melbourne will be in a much larger city, so it's going to be quite different from the Charleston and Spoleto, Italy, festivals. I was brought up on the festival in Italy; I went there when I was 18 and stayed for 5 years...and really came of age in a lot of different ways as a human being...deciding what I was going to do with my life.  It was a very emotional and significant time for me, and I realize that more and more as I've been here. On the personal level, it's meant an enormous thing to me. So it's hard to take an objective look at the whole concept of these festivals because I feel I'm tied up in them very much personally, even though...I have to say I thought I'd grown away from them--I haven't.

So this festival means a lot more to me than simply a job, a lot more. And its success means a lot more to me and it's importance means a lot more to me. There are advantages to the festival in Italy. Spoleto is a more compact town; it's also got a center, which this town doesn't have. There isn't a place in Charleston as a tourist that you would go to; in Italy there definitely is. This town, however, has a kind of wealth that Spoleto doesn't have; it's got a kind of caring population, which Spoleto doesn't have. It's got a depth of community involvement that Spoleto never will have. I think the festival belongs much more to Charleston than it does to Spoleto, Italy. The Spoletini are a part of the festival and accept it and expect it, but expect it in they way they expect spring or expect summer. I mean, you don't make summer happen; it happens.

Here, people make this festival happen and don't expect it to happen without a lot of effort of their part. In Spoleto, there's really no office during the off season...just one person who used to be the local English teacher who works out of her home and organizes housing and that's about it. Otherwise, the office is in Rome. It's a very different relationship with the community. There's magic in Spoleto--the cruise ship magic--that I think festivals bring. That is, all these people descend on a place that's beautiful for a specific period of time and they all have these wonderful magical experiences together. And, when they fall in love and when they have affairs and they have fights and they meet people who become lifelong friends and they meet people who are bosom buddies for two weeks and they never see again.

On a human level that's very important; it's extracting you from your daily life. Spoleto, Italy, does it in a way that Charleston doesn't because there is so much community involvement here in Charleston. So there are a lot of people who have ties and continuity. In Spoleto there's very little of that.

And there are advantages and disadvantages to both. There's something wonderful about going to a party for the Scottish Ballet in somebody's glorious house. Members of the board are taking people on boat trips. That adds to the magic for some people...adds to the magic for the board members.

In Spoleto...I was 18, I was falling in love every two weeks. I can't compare the two.

Q: What should be the focus of a doctoral dissertation of festivals?

A: I don't know. I feel that the Spoleto Festival is not like other festivals. It's not like the American Dance Festival, which I worked for, or the Jacobs' Pillow Dance Festival.  I've put on some festivals myself--one called New Music America and another called New Dance USA. I think this is more like a long drawn-out Robert Wilson piece--a 24-hour, 17-day piece.

Q: A friend of mine, Carol Miles, has worked with him and has created several works of her own. How would an artist, in this case for example, looking for a place to do something new and different approach these kinds of festivals?

A: Basically, in our case they would write to me, rather than Gian Carlo, although they'd write to both.

Q: If a festival encourages the new and different to surface, how are artists encouraged to speak out?

A: We approach a lot, half approach and half reaction...half active and half reactive. I think that's the way it's always been here. Gian Carlo is very much a part of the artists' community; the general manager is part of some kind of an artist community.

Q: Issues and trends in festivals, fairs, carnivals?

A: I used to be at the NEA and we'd talk about issues and trends all the time. But when you get here and you're basically trying to...today that woman on the phone was the senator's wife from Orangeville or some place. We have a bill up in the state senate for a line item for the festival and it's extremely important that those people feel that this festival is worthwhile and important and cares about them. The trend is obscured by those details. For example, the reason I was late was because I was having lunch with the people from the Scottish Ballet and they were miffed about the party last night because no one fussed over the chairman of the board...so I was having lunch with the chairman of the board and fussing over him.

That's not long term trend, but it is the absolute reality on which one works. I think the long term trends in a way are misleading. We were talking about the Edinburgh Festival and the impact that the strike on Libya will have on it and tourism generally. It's going to have a good deal of impact. Who could have predicted that five months ago? two months ago? Who can predict tomorrow? If the Savannah River nuclear reactor plant blows up, I mean I can tell you that we will have some things to worry about here.

Whether Expo is going to change how things operate...I mean, it's been successful...it'll be interesting to be have successful it is in terms of the arts. The LA Olympic Arts Festival was very influential in the way people are thinking of festivals in this country. It's not our way of thinking of festivals; it's a big city way and I think it's the antithesis of what this festival is. I mean, it's a very different concept and I think we can't...everyone is interested in the idea but I don't know why they're interested...cultural tourism is a big issue right now and obviously cultural tourism is something that's gone on in Europe forever.

People, Americans, have gone to Europe for cultural reasons and people have visited America for geographic reasons. They wanted to go to the beach, they wanted to go to the mountains, they wanted to go to the Grand Canyon...they've wanted to visit relatives, visit the Washington monument. But they've not gone to cities because they wanted to see plays, except in New York. They went to Minneapolis when the Met toured there; there was always some cultural tourism but it's become issue and a big money maker in the recent past. So that's a new issue.

Q: What is your background?

A: ...I've felt the lack of education, that's been a problem, not that I feel there are tools I'm lacking but more because I wish I were more aware of the history of what...I mean, to some extent, there isn't a history because it's going on right now and that history is sort of immaterial. But nonetheless, I've been fascinated by creating an intellectual framework, an intellectual context, within which this thing exists. And I'm not sure there is an intellectual context, but I think it'll be fascinating to develop it, nonetheless. I've never been able read very much about this kind of thing; I just can't bring myself to do it. It's very...I don't know, I just can't bring myself to do it.

Q: What would you be curious about in a book, a dissertation?

A: I would be interested in fact and figures rather than the intellectual context, because I feel that context...well, I don't read art history books or about the history of contemporary art because I want to make it for myself. What I want to do is to discuss with others what this context is and, frankly, we're a terribly nonintellectual field. We are just decidedly anti-intellectual, I would say. There's a very strong anti-intellectual movement in the arts. I mean, "You do it, and, if you talk about it, then you can't do it." Which is quite a bit different from the European approach, which is much more intellectual, much more political, much more explicit approach.

Q: Do you feel the Europeans see the political functions of their festivals?

A: But I don't think Americans look at political functions at all, whether it is American socialization, whether in terms of blacks and whites or rich and poor or whether in terms of our own development as a sense of place, a sense of people, a sense of where we are in life. Certainly Charleston is a city that has a tremendous sense of its own history, but probably has not much a sense of the artistic, the performing arts elements of that history. One has a sense of the physical history of the place; people know the Blackwell House dates from 1821 or whenever; they don't know there was a series here in this building at one point. There's that kind of history.

We very much live in the present. We feel suspicious of the past and feel that we invented ourselves yesterday. To some extent I think that the excitement of the contemporary arts, because we did invent a lot of things yesterday.

Q: Any comment on this list of questions?

A: These questions are very interesting in that they don't deal with any of the facts, figures, how to make it work, which is frankly the thing that all of us struggle with. I can tell you I don't wake up mornings thinking about the artistic vision, though I think it absolutely crucial that it be there.

Q: That's intriguing, because it means that it must be very strong and it is not an issue...it's working. There's an acceptance of what this festival is.

A: Yes, because the consensus is in individuals. That is what has galvanized this community. That is people trust a number of individuals associated with this festival and will take things on faith because of their trust in those individuals, things that they would not take on faith were those individuals not involved. What I mean is generally people think that what they see at the Spoleto Festival is better than they might think if they saw it out of the context of the Spoleto Festival. Or they're prepared to take some radical art in the context of the festival that they would not want to see elsewhere. I was giving a speech yesterday and was introduced by someone who said he was forced to go to a chamber music concert by his wife and that he expected to hate it but he loved it. I think he makes a point of going to things in the festival that he would not go to otherwise. That issue of trust is a very important one.

I don't think the people buy into the artistic vision per se; they buy into the fact that there is an artistic vision. Even if they distrust their own taste or, say, I don't like this stuff, they still trust the idea that someone feels this is good...enough.

Q: That leads to the possibility that the NEA might have had more than one reason for thinking this festival was good for the South, one being that there's not that much new art surfacing in the South...

A: No, I think that was the primary reason...

Q: And the effect of this...

A: Well, frankly, I don't think the NEA thinks things through very thoroughly.

Q: Who at the NEA would I talk with?

A: Well, the key person is Walter Anderson, who's now retired. He was head of the music program. He's very charming and a nice man. I knew him when I was at the NEA for a few years. I don't think this country has policies, has politics in the arts. We don't think things through. I mean the glory of the garden, that wonderful English statement about decentralization, is now something that could be said here or certainly wouldn't get much attention if it were.

Q: What are your personal plans for shaping the festival?

A: There are on the one hand some vague, grandiose plans. But I feel the festival has the opportunity, is in position to be extremely important to various art forms; it can make statements; it can be a marvelous showcase; it can do work that is significant not necessarily to an audience in Charleston only but to a much larger arts world. I think that has to be the constituency at which we aim, that larger arts community, because if we aim at that, if we reach them, we will reach the audience here in Charleston with something that will be significant to them. If we only aimed to the audience in Charleston, we will do something that's of significance to very, very few people.

Q: Do you see broadcasting festival events live on TV or radio?

A: Although I'm eager to have our events put on television, I feel there's something about being in a theater that can't be duplicated anywhere. I think television is a very, very poor second. The exciting thing to me is that relatively few people can come to this. We reach a larger group than the population of Charleston, which is important; when I speak of a small group, I'm speaking of a group larger than our community. It is a large group in its own way but not measured in the millions.

I think it's extremely important that we do things that have a kind of intimacy and scale that is human; because I don't think two million has anything to do with the human scale at all. And I don't think it's a question of being elite or exclusive. I think its a question of doing something that is worthwhile. The kind of things we're doing are not things that should be looked at in five minute doses in between flipping channels, having dinner, having telephone calls. That's not what we should be doing because these are serious things that do need to be given serious attention that you can give when you're in the theater.

If you devote an hour and a half or three hours to go to a performance, you give it a very different kind of attention span than if you are watching a television set. I think that is something that is crucial for the performing arts, crucial for the arts generally. I think the television sort of demeans things and trivializes; nonetheless, if I can get on TV I'll be thrilled.

Q: There seems to be a lack of archival material?

A: Well, we don't throw anything away...look at my desk. My own feeling on that if given the choice between doing and archiving, there's no choice.

Q: When I was in a position to attempt to explain Spoleto to a community, I found a lack of organized materials. It would have been helpful to have a history, video tapes, and so on, to get across the complexity and the full scale of activity going on.

A: I agree it's very difficult to convey. But I don't think the concept is translatable. I don't think you could do a Spoleto in Chattanooga. I think you can do a Riverbend Festival in Chattanooga. I thought about setting up my own festival rather than doing this, in some city or other...I might do it yet. But I wouldn't want it to be a Spoleto Festival. I would want to do a different festival.

Q: What type of festival would you do?

A: I would prefer to do a festival more like this than like a lot of the others.

Colin Sturm, the first managing director of Spoleto Melbourne, Australia, in September 1986, was interviewed in May during Charleston's Spoleto 86.

To start from the beginning you've got to make an assessment of the purposes of a festival. The problem from what you've told me is that you're not going back to basic concepts. A festival has two important foundation stones. They're part of the total structure. Without them both being effective you haven't got a festival that will work. The first part of a festival structure is whether the community wants it. If it's not bubbling up from the community, it's going to automatically fail. You cannot impose something of this sort onto a community from above. It just doesn't work.

If the community wants the festival, and the word festival covers a great number of types of activity, then they're going to help pay for it and they're not going to mind if public monies are put into it. A lot of the infighting that happens can be less intrusive; it will always be there because in a community there are always two sides to what's proposed. You need to set your goal in whatever paper you're thinking about of clearly defining the objectives of the festival.

Q: You would agree that to ask why a festival started is a very important beginning?

A: Yes, Spoleto was started by an idea from Gian Carlo Menotti, which came from his friend, the American composer Sam Barber, who said, when they were both young men, that art should not be just the froth on the top of the soup, that it should have a concrete, measurable effect in a community. To test that as a premise, they both looked for a town in Italy and in the States--they were looking in both places, but they found quickest a town in Italy which was absolutely on its beam ends. Its population consisted of very elderly and very young people. All the young, middle age groups had to leave because there was no work, no money. Unemployment was something like 60 per cent.

So they thought that if they were going to prove their premise, then the festival would have to do things that in a commercial sense were good. So when they suggested this to the city fathers, they grabbed at the chance to try anything. Therefore, my first point was that the community wanted it, what community there was there. The end result is that Spoleto is a thriving little city as a direct input of the festival. It brings lots of tourism into the place. There's been a great deal of building and regeneration of the medieval buildings has carried out with public money from taxes that the money has generated. So there has been a measurable effect. The improvement in beneficial life style through the arts is enormous.

And in a smaller way, because its effects were not so obviously into grand statistics, which will give you into the country. So that in the USA, although I'm not sure which department it would be, in Australia and in Britain, these statistics are in the department of government that looks after budget, since they're a budget consideration. The multiplier effect in Keynesian economic terms that are available from the arts are surprisingly big. You'll find that the employment possibilities, which for a politician is a big thing, the creation of jobs is quite properly and should be an important vote getter, so that every politician is going to be interested in this. You'll find that there are statistical models everywhere. Local governments if they are at all forward looking will have in their forecasting budgetary processes statistical models of the various types of input that will effect in an improvement fashion their ability to generate income.

Q: So, the primary question is whether the community wants a festival? This would seem to imply that they perceive the need, the benefits, the economics and is that known clearly. Wouldn't that be a key aspect?

A: Yes, the community must want it. If they're not terribly interested, then you won't be able to get money given from private pockets, private in the sense of local people, whatever. And you won't be able to get the important support, which is public monies. No politician worth his salt is going to commit one dollar to a project that hasn't got community endorsement. Politicians are the same the world over; they're looking for votes, the ongoing supply of votes; the pork barrel concept in any language works. Therefore, it's very important for a festival to have a general conception of being good for the community.

The second point that I'd make to you is that the festival has got to be able to raise the money to do the job. Now, a small festival like the Riverbend--I think you said the budget was nearly a million dollars--any community in general terms is going to need between $2 to $4 million dollars to make something happen that is going to be very much up front effective. Just the cost in the USA and Australia, which is going to be too broad a generalization but for this purpose it's enough, and you can't in fact have something that's going to be looked at by people who are not terribly committed unless it is very impactive. It can't be effective in those terms without sufficient money, which then goes the full circle back to there having to be enough people in the community who think it's worth having. So you see my point of that first pair of foundation stones.

Local government, represented by the mayor of Charleston or in your case Chattanooga, both have the same sort of concerns and basically their concerns are the one's I've been talking about--votes and getting those votes in a way the community thinks is worth while. So that where local or state or national government has got clearly in this group mind that there is a benefit, a real benefit, then you're going to get some assistance.

This really goes back to starting the thing off as we have done in Australia for some 15 or 20 years and that is when a festival is put forward to government as being considered for public funding, that there is a proper economic feasibility study done of the impact in all the terms of an economic study of benefits and costs. If there is a plus at the end of the balance sheet, that is, if it's going to put in something more than it takes out, then there's a chance that government might consider it. But if it doesn't come out, if it just comes out even say, then the benefits are not particularly apparent in feet on the ground, down earth principles and it then becomes the sort of festival which is an area grouping of people who are going to put their hands into their own pockets, do a great deal of voluntary work themselves, and probably have a ball. But it'll stay at that particular level.

In Australia, we think of this of the Scout All complex, you know. The Boy Scouts are a nice worthwhile community activity; the parents of the kids get together once a month or whatever--you've got an activity which brings the community together for that particular purpose.

Q: You don't think that's a sufficient purpose for a festival?

A: No, it's too specialized. You see, a general festival--you've got two types of festivals. One which is a carnival, summer festival out in the open, marching girls, sports, swimming, stores selling things in the street--this type of what comes into my mind under the general heading of carnival, which is a great idea. Once a year, usually in the summer time, sometimes a day or a weekend or a long holiday weekend--that's one type of activity. That can be done reasonably cheaply.

But when you start about a festival that means the use of venues, halls, theaters, bring people in from out-of-state, entertainments, and so on, you're then getting into the entertainment business. The entertainment business is a very expensive and very specialized, and, if it's going to work well, almost needing a genius at business. You were saying you that you hadn't had an artistic director. The whole point of having an artistic director is to have somebody who is essentially uninterested in the financial end of things, who is looking purely at what is going to work in a general entertainment sense. And you then have, what I presume you've already got under that system, someone who is a business manager. Now without the combination of the two I think you run a risk.

Festivals are not a subject studied in great depth in England or Australia because it's not going to be of much use to anybody. There are only about seven major festivals, which are fully blown in administrative terms, in the whole world. These would be the three in England--Wakesford, Edinburgh, and Chichester; there's a number of small ones in the States, one of which is Wolf Trap; there's this one with its three locations; there's a big one in Australia, apart from the one we're setting up, in Adlelaide, which is the capitol of South Australia. It's an international festival.

Of the ones you've mentioned, Salzburg is a very specific festival; it's just an annual event with some specialized operas; it's not what I think of as a broadly based festival. There's one in Canada that I can't remember the name of. There's a marvelous one in France, Aix en Provence. On the fingers of two hands you can come up with all of the top ones, under ten I think.

Of course, the study of those festivals and small ones has been matter of great interest to the economics division of government in that area, both local, state, and federal. Those statistics are probably published every year as part that entity's economic process.

Q: A Salzburg study has used a seven to one economic multiplier. Do you agree with that ratio?

A: I would think that in Keynesian economic terms would be very hard to support. It would treat with a pretty beady eye any multiplier that went much above 2.7 or 2.8. Because in the arts you get all sorts of muddying of the waters by people who are multiple attendees. Say you come here to Charleston to visit the festival. You're one person, but you might have ten activities. So that you as an audience unit are counted ten times. This is in feasibility study terms something that has to be watched very carefully. Similarly, the trickle down effect to the community in beneficial terms has the displacement factor.

By proper statistical analysis, in Keynesian terms, I would imagine that a multiplier of seven, for instance, is double counting the audience number effect. It is also not taking into account properly the displacement effect. What happened is, if you visualize yourself as living here in Charleston, and you decide ten tickets, say at a $100 value, then in your own pocket budget sense instead of spending that $100 on other entertainment or other things, such as replacing a household item costing a hundred dollars, you put it into the entertainment thing. This displacement factor mitigates strongly against the overall beneficial effect. It's where the beneficial effect creates a true plus that you've got something that's measurably beneficial. Therefore, the multiplier effect that anyone comes up with in the arts that's more than the high two's, I'd be casting a pretty beady eye at it.

Q: What got you interested in managing a festival in Australia? What in your background prepared you for festivals? And what will be the artistic nature of that Melbourne festival?

A: Gian Carlo Menotti is our artistic director. He has a very definite opinion on what should be included in a festival. It's very wide ranging but it has its emphasis on opera, ballet, and music. It's not to say he's not interested in the other fine arts, literature, crafts, and so on, but this is his primary interest. Therefore the emphasis of what he puts together has got his personality stamped on it. So the sort of festival we'll have is really rather similar to here in Charleston. There are certain things that push it in one direction or another because there are local requirements. Because unless you can sell the tickets, you are not going to have a festival that will last very long. So you have to look at your market place.

Q: What percentage of tickets will be local?

A: The statistics in general terms, at least the English ones, show that 80 per cent of support for a festival is local. The way they define local varies but it ranges from 50-100 miles. The remainder comes from near but not very far away. Then you classify "far away" as far as you like. If there's going to be a special performance of an opera that I like, and it's going to have a cast that you're never going to see again, I would personally move heaven and earth to get to it. And other people of like mind would come from other parts of the world. But we would be some part of that 20 per cent of "other."

Defining Festival

With this particular example of the origins and evolution of one well-regarded town arts festival, the process of defining festival is expanded beyond one's personal experience with one or more of the many types of festivals.  Although serious festival research can be seen as a process of "standing inside the text," standard dictionary terms provide a convenient starting point.  As an adjective, festival means joyous, mirthful, gay.  As a noun, festival signifies celebration, entertainment, or series of performances of a certain kind, often held periodically, such as a Bach festival. The related term festivity includes those same qualities as well as merriment or things done in celebration. 

A celebration is an action to praise, extol, commemorate, glorify, or honor. It is also an action to observe a holiday or an anniversary with festivities or to have a convivial good time. The sense of deliberately constructed meaning and specific focus signified by celebration is not the same as the more diverse set of phenomena signified by festival. {use Turner's Celebration quotes here]--and move to end of this section

Carnival is a term closely associated with festival in the sense of a revelry or time of revelry, festivity, merry-making, or an entertainment with side shows, rides, or games; it can be an activity usually operated as a commercial enterprise by social or charitable organizations. The Latin term, carnem levare, means to remove meat, which is associated with the period of feasting and fasting just before the beginning of the Lenten season, of which Mardi Gras is the last day.  Several hundred carnival season balls are held in Vienna, Austria, from January to the day before Lent begins, but these events are not regarded as festivals or part of a festival.  Yet the balls, several of which I attended in 1995-98, are very festive events; that they were historically related to a religious calendar does not diminish their festival air.  They celebrate the Viennese love of dance, especially waltzing at the more formal balls in the Hofburg Palace, and so from one's experience suggest a blurring of the boundaries of terms such as festival, carnival, celebration, etc. into a spectrum of cultural practices defying simple classification and definition.

A festival's logic apparently springs from sources other than the official/unofficial, upside-down world of carnival logic proposed by Bakhtin in his work on Rabelais. [M. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (1965; Bloomington: Indiana UP 1984).]  If carnival is the opposite of the official church world, for example, then it should possess the expected symbolic unity of action in its reversals of the church as a norm, functioning in effect to authenticate the church's authority and power to frame social discourse. Festivals appear to lack this logic of reversal, as can be seen from analysis of the Chattanooga and Charleston festivals, and, in effect, perform the  iconic function of "church."

Fair, another related activity, is a gathering of people held at regular intervals for barter and sale of goods. A fair also can be a festival or carnival where there is entertainment and things are sold, such as a bazaar for charity. A fair can be an exhibition, often competitive, of manufactured products with various amusement facilities and educational displays.

Exposition normally describes a large public fair or show, often international in scope; its related meaning in literature and music suggests information or meaning brought out that was not previously present.

A simplifying commonality is not easily perceived. "People closely gathered together for a brief time in a relatively small space with a specific goal of new experience" is a partial definition that comes near to abstracting all but one element of these various standard definitions. What is missing is a purpose that seemingly is no purpose at all: play--joy, mirth, revelry, merry-making, entertainment. However, is this supposed goal of play possibly hidden by a language of acceptable intentions? For example, we say we are going to Charleston's Spoleto Festival to hear a new Menotti opera but the private intent could be to relax at the beach, to stroll the streets and just to be open to new discoveries as if we were in a playground.  There is random play, and intentional play; a broader defining mode is required to address such a semantic problem of mixed and hidden purposes, the societal work of a festival, and the unknown effects of a festival.  Is there a limitation in ordinary language that must be  overcome if we are to see past the multiple masks of festival practices to their larger meanings and even lessons?

The problem remains, therefore, how does one define a festival in addition to labeling its apparent aims or effects? Is there a definition process less dependent on subjective views and desires? To ask, "What is a festival?" generates as many responses as there are festivals themselves. Neither fair nor carnival, neither jamboree nor jubilee, the diversity of "festival" defies easy classification and definition by the tools of familiar language. As an always incomplete archaeology of past civilizations can be constructed from pot fragments, so a partial archaeology of festivals can be constructed from bits and pieces of fragmentary evidence we find in various statements made about the Spoleto festival: "...an example and inspiration." "...breeding ground for undesirables." "...reflects the culture of the times."  "...a long drawn-out Robert Wilson piece--a twenty-four-hour, seventeen-day piece." "...joy and pleasure." "...musicians and actors...feed off each other's inspirations." "...convince hardnosed businessmen that there is some financial benefit." "...for the joy of it." "...a social and political message." "...not very sympathetic to [bringing] art to the people." (From Spoleto Festival U.S.A. interviews, 1986).

Economic and aesthetic purposes and effects, underlying social and political functions--all are mixed in this sampling of comments made from 1958 to 1988 in interviews and written statements about Gian Carlo Menotti's Italian, American, and Australian [discontinued after a year or two] Spoleto festivals. This selection of seemingly contradictory statements suggests that it is futile to search for a unity, or single overall theme, in the inherently plural textual structures of festivals. Even the premise of a textual "unitary theme" seems problematic.  Assuming a multiplicity of festival meanings suggests the reasoning and process behind the selection of the three basic elements selected for this study: place, ideal, force and their various concrete and theoretical equivalents.  The terms are from a quote on a postcard sold by the Chautauqua Institution in 1987.  The quotation, "Chautauqua is a place, an ideal, and a force," was attributed to its founder, John Vincent Heyl.  ( postcard picture here: note 6)

Vincent's late nineteenth-century "functions" characterization of the influential Chautauqua Institution, one of the oldest American summer arts festivals, provides an initial interpretive classification. Through this template, festivals can be viewed as unique places waiting for a set of ideals expressed through the force of the artists and participants.  At this stage, the principal argument is that most culturally, artistically, politically, and historically significant festivals function as a special type of theatrical time and space where the "different" is presented intentionally and where new artistic and other imaginative productions and objects often are introduced.

 The following chapters, therefore, will examine several festivals in light of this new template - festivals as seen in relation to their places, their set of ideals, and to their forces (arti