Charleston, S.C. -- Menotti is gone.
Long live Spoleto!
So went the unspoken theme of this year's arts festival in Charleston, which closed Sunday after a reduced 12-day run.
The Menotti cited is Gian Carlo Menotti, librettist, opera composer, stage director, festival founder and chief, a man whose creative gifts are at least equaled by his flair for making money.
And, depending on who you ask, Spoleto is the name of America's premier fine arts festival, or a hilly town in Italy with its own related festival, or a legal property, or a musical mecca, or a boon to tourism, or just a headache.
Mr. Menotti, 82, screamed addio to Charleston last October after years of arguments over power, money and sometimes art. The last straw, it seems, was the town's reluctance to embrace the visions of Francis "Chip" Menotti, his adopted son and chosen successor.
This departure raised the question: Was Spoleto dead in America?
Not in the eyes of Mr. Menotti, who suggested he would move Spoleto Festival USA to another city.
Not in the view of South Carolina bigwigs, either. They were not about to let Spoleto die, not when it brought an estimated $73 million into the state each year. As for it moving, well, they owned the name.
The festival's survival into its 18th year has been exciting financially and artistically. Mostly financially.
Mr. Menotti weakened the Charleston operation by insisting that board members and artists choose between America and the Italian Spoleto, over which he retained control. For fund-raising, this meant it wasn't possible to raise money for both festivals.
To make matters worse, a $1 million accumulated deficit on a budget of just $4.3 million loomed in Charleston as Mr. Menotti departed. Creditors were calling, most of them local businesses. Through the spring, Spoleto's board of directors was spending as much time calming nerves and requesting debt forgiveness as raising money.
A "fix-it" team was hired to cut costs for 1994 and get the books in order, with Milton Rhodes as general manager. A $600,000 loan from the state was approved, and the festival's length was cut -- from 17 days last year to 12.
But if Spoleto succeeded in funding its 1994 operations -- even realizing a $100,000 surplus, according to board chairman Homer Burrous on Monday -- it fell short artistically.
The loss of talented conductor Steven Mercurio, a Menotti casualty, didn't help. On the other hand, the re-appointment of conductor Spiros Argiris might have been expected to help more.
With the lofty title "Artistic Director for Symphonic and Operatic Activities and Principal Conductor," Mr. Argiris carried the load for Spoleto's big-ticket endeavors this year, including three showcase musical-dramatic works and the "Festival Concert."
It was alarming, then, to find him missing in action. Apparently, a scheduling conflict with the Opera Bastille in Paris (a "Tosca" starring Placido Domingo) prevented him from attending to Spoleto.
Still, Mr. Rhodes was at pains to point out that Mr. Argiris had earned his undisclosed salary by planning and casting.
What Mr. Rhodes could not do was explain the wayward decisions that resulted in an adulterated Beethoven's "Fidelio," a miscast Handel's "Acis and Galatea," and the waste that was Mauricio Kagel's "La trahison orale."
The Beethoven, a Nikolaus Lehnhoff production new to this country, suffered cuts and the substitution of silly poetry for the German dialogue. The changes were supposed to make the action clearer but succeeded only in emphasizing the opera's static nature. Its cast sang powerfully, with Ulla Gustafsson an intense but slightly unsteady Leonore and Johan Botha an aggrieved Florestan who made a good case for prison food. Both singers could have used more imaginative guidance from Alicja Mounk's vigorous podium.
Handel's English masque was oddly served by the mature Greek soprano of Alexandra Papadjiakou as the love-object Galatea. But her singing was not without refinement.
Maria Fortuna was a dramatically engaging though shrill Acis, Joel Sorensen a tonally impure Damon, and Aurio Tomicich a Polyphemus with poor diction.
Director Ulderico Manani's fondness for plastic wrap and aluminum foil dotted his garish sets.
Kagel's music-theater piece emerged as more of an endurance test than a tax on the imagination. This puerile study of "the image of devils," staged in reds and blacks with endlessly moving flies and crude lighting, offered a sequence of cheap stunts accompanied by simple, vaguely engaging percussive music. Its capable performers never came close to winning over their audience.
Spoleto's "Festival Concert" needs a strong conductor, one who can give the festival's orchestra of young musicians a riveting experience.
The reactive Steven Sloane, substituting for Mr. Argiris, hardly fit the bill this year. His Mahler First Symphony evinced an ineptitude for building climaxes, making the composer's loud outbursts seem arbitrary. In Strauss' Four Last Songs, Mr. Sloane was unable to stop the capacious soprano of Camellia Johnson from tearing into phrases or to milk the music's tone colors with effect.
Spoleto's known strength in chamber music continued beyond Mr. Menotti, thanks to director Charles Wadsworth's decision to stay with Charleston. This series gains from its wooden, perfectly scaled Dock Street Theatre venue and Mr. Wadsworth's ear for superb young musicians.
This year he delivered violinist Chee-Yun, violist Nokuthula Ngwenyama, pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, baritone Christopheren Nomura and the Orion String Quartet, among worthy others.
Joseph Flummerfelt and his Westminster Choir, also holdovers, saw to it that the festival's choral needs were met, while reminding us that Mr. Flummerfelt is a better preparer than conductor. John Kennedy presided over adventurous, and on at least one occasion bad, programming of 20th-century chamber music. Morton Feldman's "Why Patterns?" shone, however.
Dance contributions to Spoleto 1994 included Nederlands Dans Theater 3 and Miami City Ballet. Among the jazz musicians were Lionel Hampton and Horace Silver.
Charleston's fringe festival, Piccolo Spoleto, offered numerous options for those unable to get tickets for main events.
W. Andrew Powell is a free-lance writer who covers music and business.