Backstage or in Crowd, He Pursues Arts Relentlessly

His calling card reads:

Octavio Fazio

Artist, Philosopher, Traveler, Adventurer

Collector of Rainbows and Dreams of Wonders

Seeker of Beauty, Worshiper of God

“I love everything if it’s beautiful,” Fazio said in his English heavily accented with Italian. “Everything.”

The 65-year-old self-proclaimed seeker of beauty has traveled to every corner of the world to indulge his insatiable appetite for opera, ballet, music, theater, and just about every other form of artistic expression--worshiping not just the art form, but the artists themselves.

“Oh, yes,” he said, in a recent interview at the home of a friend and fellow La Jollan. “Backstage for me is fundamental. I have at least 25,000 photographs and I don’t know how many albums full of autographs. There is no room left for me to sit down in my house, it’s so full of memorabilia. Everywhere you look, there are autographed pictures.”

Short in stature but very long on hand-kissing Continental charm, Fazio is the ultimate Stage Door Johnnie. He stalks his heroes backstage after each performance, showering them with adulation until he gets the coveted autograph--or better yet, a photograph of him arm-in-arm with his favorite star. The tactic works.

Fazio’s collection is chock-full of photos of the beaming fan posing alongside such internationally acclaimed superstars as Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Rudolf Nureyev, Galina Ulanova and Lyudmila Semenyaka. Also included among his mementos: ballet slippers, programs and record albums, each one inscribed with personal messages to Fazio.

“I won’t take no for an answer,” he said. “You know, it cost me three weeks to get Baryshnikov’s autograph. When I first approached him, he said, ‘Darling, I don’t give autographs.’ But I came back to Los Angeles every day, and, finally I found a way, clandestinely, with the help of one of the dancers.

“First, he just wrote his name on my book, and then a week later, I was back with the same book. I said, ‘Misha, my name is Octavio.’ So . . . he added my name to the autograph.”

Another week later, Fazio said, he caught Baryshnikov as he drove into a parking lot. Fazio pointed to the photograph he had taken of the ballet great behind the steering wheel of his car.

“He said, ‘What happens now? Wasn’t that enough?’ And I said, ‘It wouldn’t cost you anything to put in a few nice words.’ Well, he didn’t want to sign, but finally he said, ‘OK,’ and put in ‘Best Wishes.’ It took me three times to get this.”

Surrounded by his huge bounty, which he hauled to his friend’s home in boxes and shopping bags, Fazio explained that this unique collection was all accumulated within the past 20 years.

“This is only a fraction of what I have collected over the years,” he said. “I had many wonderful things that were lost in a fire at the airport in Havana. That makes me very sad, because I had so many more pictures and personal things that can never be replaced.”

The zealous arts enthusiast was born in Calabria, where he experienced his first opera at the age of 7. Educated in the classics, he went on to medical school and came within a year of becoming a doctor, he said.

“In my fourth year, I went into World War II, and, when I got out, I said, ‘ Ciao , see you in my next life.’ I never went back. By then I was too Americanized.”

Determined to get to the United States, Fazio immigrated to Argentina, where he lived until he was able to make his way to Miami in 1957.

“I was in the fast-food restaurant business, where I made a lot of money,” he said. “While I lived in Miami, I went to see everything--even as far away as New York. There were so many wonderful things to see in New York.”

Fazio said he has owned and sold several businesses in the last 30 years. He used some of the money from those ventures to pay for his globe-hopping stage habits, then bought into other business. In the mid-1970s, he said, he owned three Mexican fast-food drive-ins called Buenos Dias.

Six years ago, he decided to ditch the working world entirely to devote full time to his first love.

“I got tired of it, and I said, ‘From now on it will be one night chamber music, one night ballet, one night opera, one night symphony. I want to see everything .’ Now, I travel back and forth to Los Angeles and Costa Mesa for performances.

“I don’t go to San Francisco much anymore,” Fazio said. “But I still put more miles on my car in a month than other people do in a lifetime getting to all the performances. One day, I saw the Bolshoi in Los Angeles in the afternoon, spent an hour backstage, and then came back to San Diego in one hour and 55 minutes--just in time to see Three’s Company’s Lo-Tec concert that evening. I sometimes see three things in one day.”

Fazio’s quest for beauty takes him to every major production in Southern California. Even local arts events with home-grown casts are hot tickets for this enthusiast. As a result, Fazio is a fixture at the California Ballet, the San Diego Opera, Starlight Bowl, the San Diego Symphony and the Old Globe, among other venues. But once is never enough, he said.

“I go to see every performance,” he said, “not just one time for each production. I saw all the Bolshoi performances and all the Kirov concerts when they were in Los Angeles. If the opera has four performances, I go four times.

“When Jack O’Brien put on ‘Porgy and Bess,’ I saw that in Los Angeles, I saw all four nights in Costa Mesa and every night in San Diego. I saw every single performance. If they have matinees, then I see those, too.”

Many of his celebrity autographs are variations on this theme: “To Octavio, who came to all my performances in San Diego, and all my performances in Los Angeles, and all my performances in Costa Mesa.”

Fazio estimates his arts habit has cost him about $200,000 in tickets and membership fees over the last six years, but says he avoids the top-priced seats.

“I like to see everything,” he said, “and I like to go to the socials, if they’re not too expensive. I belong to 37 cultural organizations, but my membership is always at the minimum level. . . . When the movie ‘Dancers’ with Baryshnikov played here, I went to Los Angeles and Mission Viejo to see it, as well as to San Diego, because it didn’t play here long enough.

“I loved that movie, and, you know, it was filmed in the same theater, the Theatro Petruzzelli, where I saw many, many operas in Italy.”

In 1976, when the Bolshoi celebrated 200 years of excellence, Fazio was there for the company’s bicentennial bash.

“Sure, I went. I wouldn’t miss that,” he said, pointing to the autographed picture of Yuri Grigorovich, director of the Bolshoi Ballet and prima ballerina assoluta Natalia Bessmertnova, the director’s wife.

Fazio was in the audience for the final performance of Kirov during the troupe’s Los Angeles stay in 1986. Afterward, he managed to get backstage and mingle with the stars.

“I was in Los Angeles six times to see all six performances, but when I tried to go backstage with gifts for all the ballerinas and a collage for the company, the KGB were all over and they wouldn’t let me pass,” Fazio said.

“Alexander Gastondegui, president of the American corporation that sponsored the Kirov’s visit, said to them, ‘Please, you must let him come inside. I want to introduce him to the general director of the Kirov.’ But they wouldn’t let me in. He finally got me the special badge worn by members of the Kirov, and I got in.”

When Gastondegui introduced Fazio to Oleg Vinogradov, general director of the legendary Kirov, he called Fazio “the best fan of the Kirov,” adding that Fazio had commuted every day from San Diego to see the company dance. The director greeted Fazio with “Bolshoia spasibo, “ which Fazio translated as “ ‘Big thank you.’ Bolshoi means big in Russian.”

Not only is Fazio one of the world’s most ardent fans, he is, by his own admission, also among its most boisterous.

“Oh, I start screaming, ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ and people around me can’t hide from the noise. Once Nureyev said to me, ‘When you scream those bravos, I’m afraid the whole stage will come down--but don’t stop.’ ”

Opera singer Kathleen Battle’s performance at the Ambassador in Los Angeles was sold out long in advance, and it looked like Fazio might miss his chance to cheer her on. But he persevered until the theater opted to put 50 chairs right on stage to accommodate the overflow.

“I was one of the first to arrive, and I got the best seat on stage, about 5 feet behind her pianist. When she started leaving the stage, I had to stand right up--I can’t stay seated,” he said. “And as soon as she got off, I opened up with the bravos, and she gave five encores.”

But Fazio’s bravos fortissimo aren’t always appreciated.

“When I’m in church, I sing so loud the priest says, ‘Please, don’t sing. You’ll drive everyone out. I don’t want people to change denominations.’ ”

In one of Fazio’s many round-the-world vacations, he found himself in Egypt, in the midst of a major archeological project.

“The Nile River was spreading, and it was covering the temples,” said Fazio. “I saw an Italian corporation working to disassemble the temple, and I asked if they needed any volunteers. They said sure, so I stayed.

“I was living at the Hilton Hotel and taking a taxi to the Nile every day to help with record keeping. After a month and a half, I realized I would spend all my money if I stayed there any longer,” he said. “The House of Italy in Balboa Park still has the pictures of me in the middle of the Nile working to save the temple.”

Fazio is on the boards of several local organizations, including the California Ballet, Three’s Company and Dancers and the Pacific Chamber Opera. The La Jolla Guild of the San Diego Opera Assn. made him honorary membership chairman after Fazio single-handedly increased the guild’s ranks by 104 people.

Fazio’s pet project is waging war on arts indifference in Southern California.

“The foundation of my credo is that a nation of lovers of the arts is a nation of seekers of beauty and good,” he said. “I want to penetrate the arts into the middle classes. Now, only the multimillionaires can attend some of the big social events and fund-raisers, but I want to reach everybody.”

As a result, Fazio instituted “The Octavio’s Guild of the Fine Arts,” which threw its first bash at the Westgate Hotel in April. A $15 ticket to this black-tie affair entitled patrons to seven hours of dining and dancing, and a ballet performance by Stage Seven dancers--all sponsored by Fazio himself.

“I lost $3,000 on that, and I’m not a nonprofit organization,” he said. “But I’m convinced this is the best invention of the century. Next time we’ll do better. If I bring in people just to dance, to eat roast beef, and then show them the glorious shows of ballet, they will start loving these things.

“I want to get the masses to the arts, because great violinists, great dancers, they don’t have any criminal instincts. The influence of the arts will pull out the beauty in the human soul, because a nation of lovers of the arts is also a nation of seekers of beauty.”

Fazio has plans to team up with arts patrons in Los Angeles and Orange County to foster the arts through low-priced shindigs, such as the Westgate gala.

“I’ll be 66 in July, and I’m going to celebrate by making another big bash,” he said.

What impression has this passionate arts lover made on the San Diego scene?

“I was floored when I saw him at the last performance in Los Angeles,” said Jack O’Brien, artistic director of the Old Globe. “We saw him backstage, and he impressed himself on us because we had never seen anybody like him. There’s a difference between a crackpot and someone who is actually passionate about it. He had seen every single performance, and was truly knowledgeable.

“Whatever there is about him, it’s not an irritating persistence,” said O’Brien. “When you consider the amount of people you run up against, it’s impossible to remember their names. But I remembered his immediately. There’s just nobody like him anywhere.”