Song and Stance : Texaco Takes Out Ad to Turn Its Proxy Battle With Icahn Into a Fight at the Opera

The Texaco opera won’t be over till the shareholders sing, but the on-stage medley of insults and brickbats between Texaco and corporate raider Carl C. Icahn has hit another harsh note with the arrival of the latest issue of Opera News.

In an advertisement headlined “Don’t Stop the Music!” in the magazine’s June issue, Texaco advances the glum prospect of a halt to its decades-long sponsorship of the Saturday afternoon broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera if Icahn manages to take over the company.

The select readership of Opera News--presumably sprinkled with a goodly number of Texaco shareholders--is implored to side with the oil company’s management in its bitter proxy fight with Icahn. Shareholders are to vote at the annual meeting June 17.

Texaco officials admit they have no particular evidence that an Icahn-led Texaco would abandon the Met after 48 years, the longest running such corporate sponsorship. But they argue that opera-wise, the company is a known quantity.

Icahn, Texaco’s biggest shareholder, has offered $60 a share for Texaco and proposes to break up the firm.

“We have no idea what Mr. Icahn would do,” conceded spokesman Peter Maneri of Texaco. “We’ve talked about a lot of things with him, but his musical preferences are not among them. We’re just communicating with our friends of 48 years and frankly looking for their support.”

However, Icahn himself suggests that the ads might be close to the mark. In a phone conversation about it Wednesday, the chairman of Trans World Airlines said nothing to reassure the Met. Instead, he preached that corporate contributions should be voted on by the shareholders.

“I’m a patron of the arts, but I do it with my own money, not with dividends from a company that has been taken into bankruptcy,” said Icahn, referring to Texaco’s recent financial troubles.

$500,000 to Carnegie Hall

“I’m not prepared to address the question of the opera broadcasts,” he said. “But I believe shareholders should have a right to vote on contributions unless they are closely aligned with the company’s interests and not just some pet charity of the chairman.”

Aides say that Icahn personally forked over $500,000 for the renovation of Carnegie Hall in New York.

The whole notion of a Texaco pullout is unsettling to opera buffs. The oil company is understood to spend in the neighborhood of $4 million annually to support the Met, including the weekly radio broadcasts and, for the past 12 years, telecasts.

“Texaco is the opera, and the Texaco name is synonymous with the Metropolitan Opera,” says Elaine B. Kones, advertising director for Opera News.

Dark Future Debatable

Most of the opera company is in Tokyo, and those remaining behind in New York said they couldn’t discuss the touchy matter.

But whatever warm feelings exist between Texaco and opera lovers aren’t necessarily matched between Texaco and its restive shareholders. And tradition aside, the dark future depicted in the ad--”Imagine a Saturday afternoon during the Metropolitan Opera season without being able to hear Mozart, or Verdi, or Puccini”--is arguable.

“They’re really reaching,” said Bryan Jacoboski, who follows big oil companies in New York for the investment firm Paine Webber. “If there’s any threat to the Met, I’m sure there’d be 100 other corporations there to pick up the tab. This is probably something dreamed up by their public relations department to generate sympathy for a company that deserves none.”