In Thrall to the All-Powerful Patron

For the performing arts in America, which have very limited public resources upon which to draw, patronage is oil. The steady supply of private money is their fuel and also the lubricant that makes them run smoothly. Ticket prices, even when they are princely, are far from sufficient to cover expenses, particularly for the opera and symphony orchestra. Consequently, we court patrons, be they individuals or corporations or foundations. But we must also hope that our ever growing dependence upon these art-world oil suppliers doesn’t produce an art-world OPEC.

Lately we’ve been treated to a rare public spectacle of patronage in action, with a press conference held by Placido Domingo, Valery Gergiev and the opera world’s most generous donor, Alberto Vilar. The conference had been arranged to announce that Vilar, a New York businessman, will support Gergiev’s Kirov Opera and Domingo’s Los Angeles Opera, to the tune of nearly $25 million, much of it for the development of new productions.

The announcements came at a luncheon, held at the suitably tony Four Seasons Hotel at Beverly Hills, and Domingo (who had a performance of “Aida” to conduct that evening) and Gergiev (who had conducted in Orange County the night before and was conducting in Phoenix that night) couldn’t have appeared happier to be spending time on stage with the man who makes many of their dreams possible. Domingo even shared an anecdote about how, when the trio was asked by a photographer to smile, Vilar joked that it was Gergiev and Domingo who had the reason to smile, not him, whose pockets were being emptied.

Yet it was Vilar who was clearly tickled pink to be sharing a podium with two great opera stars. He is nothing if not a fan, spending, he says, at least 100 nights a year in the opera house. And he is nothing if not a man who likes to be appreciated. At the Salzburg Festival, for instance, every program book carries his picture and an acknowledgment that he is the most generous patron in the festival’s history. Indeed, a European music festival-hopper will find Vilar’s photo commonplace.

Certainly, whenever Vilar, whose contributions to classical music now reach nine figures, digs into his deep pockets, there is cause for general rejoicing. But the dependence upon Vilar by more and more of the opera world (he has even offered to bail out all three of Berlin’s opera companies) and a handful of other big-time contributors to the arts comes with its own set of problems. It would be hard to believe that the people who pay the bills don’t have something to say about what they are paying for, and that they don’t have something to gain for their benefactions.

If including Vilar’s picture in the program makes him happy, it hardly harms the opera-goer. Nor does there seem to be much harm in the Metropolitan Opera’s naming a room after Vilar; he’s also its leading patron. But an unseemliness can start to creep in from such attitudes. Institutions sometimes feel obliged to acknowledge donors in ways that make the organizations appear to be for sale, and donors and corporate funders sometimes seem to be in it as much for an image boost as an inherent belief in the value of the art form.

In Los Angeles, for instance, we are starting to see big money wash away our sense of history. The latest example has been at UCLA, where the theater once popularly known as Schoenberg Hall (although it never had an official name) was recently named Ostin Hall, after a much admired popular music recording executive, Mo Ostin, and his wife, Evelyn, donors to the university’s performing arts programs. Whatever honor the Ostins may deserve, to substitute their names for that of one of history’s greatest composers and a former UCLA professor diminishes the importance of Schoenberg to the university. Although the building that houses the hall is still called the Schoenberg Music Building, the public will no longer know the theater by Schoenberg’s name. The implication is that UCLA now holds in highest regard popular culture and commerce.

Across town, USC has named its music school after a wealthy patron, Flora L. Thornton. And now all of its performing arts ensembles also carry her name--the Thornton Symphony, Thornton Contemporary Music Ensemble, Thornton Early Music Ensemble, Thornton Chamber Symphony, Thornton Percussion Ensemble, etc. USC once meant (and still should mean) something very important in music: Many of the century’s greatest musicians (Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky and Arnold Schoenberg among them) taught there; many of today’s greatest musicians (including Michael Tilson Thomas and Marilyn Horne) are products of USC. It is unnerving how little that name (and by extension its tradition?) now seems to matter to the school. It may argue that the Juilliard School or the Colburn School carry donors’ appellations, but those men were the institutions’ founders, and the names now have the weight of tradition behind them.

And who didn’t blanch when the banner was put out on the site of Walt Disney Concert Hall announcing that the main auditorium, in which the Los Angeles Philharmonic will perform, would be named after the Ralphs/Food 4 Less Foundation? Glad as I was that the supermarket’s profits provided $15 million for the building, I no longer set foot in Ralphs, and I know many others who share my boycott of a business that would so embarrass the city and the art form.

A more inspiring example, however, is that of Sony, which was the major donor behind a new concert hall at Tanglewood a few years ago. Given the opportunity to name the summer festival’s chamber music facility, Sony dubbed it Seiji Ozawa Hall, after Japan’s most celebrated classical musician and the longtime music director of the Boston Symphony, Tanglewood’s resident orchestra. In order that the electronics giant be given its due, Tanglewood installed a discreet plaque that notes that Ozawa Hall was named by Norio Ohga, who was then CEO of Sony.

It is generally assumed that when the Music Center recently changed its name to the institutionally bland Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County (with the admonition not to refer to it as PACLAC), that this would be temporary. A handsome donation, say in the neighborhood of $100 million, would likely mean a new moniker for the center. That now makes our center, unlike Lincoln Center and Kennedy Center, the biggest art-world advertisement waiting to happen, unless the Sony example is followed.

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It is not just what the hall says on the outside that we need to fear from patrons, but also what is presented inside. In the case of Vilar, opera has a patron who appears to enjoy primarily grand productions of grand operas. His international support and desire to see his productions travel imply that the world is likely to be full of them in the coming years. A typical example was an imposing new production of Berlioz’s epic, “The Trojans,” at Salzburg this past summer, which Domingo said at the press conference he expects to bring to Los Angeles. And this time Vilar’s smile seemed to indicate that the check is in the mail.

The main advantage of the production, which is by Herbert Wernicke, is its all-purpose grandeur--a single, massive wall for the set that is interesting for a while but not for the course of a five-hour opera. Still, “The Trojans” is a great work, seldom seen, and this production is superior to L.A. Opera’s previous one. The company is not likely to mount a new production from scratch, so if this one materializes here, it will, indeed, be a great gift.

And yet, this traveling “Trojans” (Vilar plans to ship it to several companies and countries) also reminds us that when individuals and corporations attach their names to expensive opera productions, whether for ego gratification or business, they want as much guarantee as possible of a popular response. They are thus not likely to stake their money and reputations on new work, ideas or artists who attempt to push the art form forward. They will want work that conforms to the needs of different theaters and different publics. The prospect of McOpera looms.

As was the case at Tanglewood, though, there is a second path such patronage can take. Consider another big opera at Salzburg this year, the premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s “L’Amour de Loin” (Love From Afar), which was a great success. Vilar’s color portrait in the program book, for his general support of the festival, was double the size of the composer’s black-and-white head shot. Yet the same program nowhere mentioned the name of the patron who paid for this commission. That was, according to the festival’s artistic director, Los Angeles’ Betty Freeman, who prefers to defer attention, and artistic control, to the artists and take comfort from knowing that that will ensure a quality that cannot otherwise be bought. My guess is that what history will recall from the Salzburg Festival of 2000 will be “L’Amour de Loin.” Not “The Trojans.”

The Vilars of the world pump the oil that keeps opera operating at a luxury level. We are glad to have them, we must have them. And presumably some of Vilar’s gift will even help defray the costs of the admirably adventurous projects that Domingo is developing. But it is the Freemans, who function behind the scenes and help create something lasting, who are much rarer and downright indispensable.