Soviet Arts Festival Budget : Plans for ‘Treasures’ Meet Mixed Reviews

Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s proposed Soviet arts festival, “Treasures of the Soviet Union,” drew mixed reviews from local and national arts experts who, on Friday, evaluated its 19 separate art and cultural elements.

San Diego Museum of art director Steven Brezzo called the festival lineup “very fine,” adding that he thinks it will draw international interest. However, his colleague across Balboa Park, San Diego Opera General Director Ian Campbell, was more reserved.

“I think it’s interesting the way it is,” Campbell said. “For a first festival like this, I think it’s a good solid start. In 10 years, it’ll be a different kind of lineup for any festival. We’ll have the experience and the expertise and a longer time line to put it together.”

Campbell, whose company is scheduled to open the three-week festival with the grand opera “Boris Godunov,” featuring a Georgian conductor and principal singers, also clarified the budget for the opera.

The city will provide $537,000 toward the cost of the opera, which will be performed five times. The entire opera will cost $800,000 to $1 million, Campbell said. The difference will be made up by ticket sales, which he estimates at $460,000.

Reaction from festival leaders outside San Diego was generally favorable, but no one contacted Friday by The Times was willing to validate it as the world-class event O’Connor promised. The mayor has talked about a festival that would make San Diego “a player” in the international arts community and compared its potential economic impact to that of last January’s Super Bowl.

Tom Schumacher, an associate director of the 1987 Los Angeles Festival and the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles, said he was stunned at the price tag put on the San Diego festival and by the quality of the events on the schedule.

“I am shocked--$6.25 million!,” Schumacher said. “I am surprised it is so expensive. That is more money than the (1987) Los Angeles Festival budget . . . .

“I would assume that the museum is doing exhibits on the scale of the Russian icons and Faberge eggs all the time,” he said. “The only kinds of things I see here that you don’t normally do is the craftsmen.”

Besides a joint exhibit of the delicately crafted ornamental eggs from the Moscow Armory and the Malcolm Forbes collection, the exhibit will feature many demonstrations by adult and children artisans.

Jarlath Hume, director of Seattle’s 1990 Goodwill Games arts festival, thought it will be “terribly difficult” to put on a “world class” festival in the 13 months remaining before the tentatively scheduled opening of Oct. 21, 1989.

“But it can be a wonderful thing for that region,” Hume said. “And (Soviet) Georgia is a fascinating place to work with. It’s a wonderful culture there.”

Hume referred to the many dancers, singers, crafts people, classical musicians, opera singers and even a group of six chefs from Tbilisi, Georgia, who were listed Thursday as part of the three-week festival.

Hume also praised the “tremendous” collection of icons in the Tbilisi Museum, some of which will be exhibited in San Diego.

“Those are fascinating, but not the kind of collection that is going to attract a zillion people,” he said.

Arts activist Jennifer Spencer, who said earlier that she was in favor of the festival but concerned with the haste in doing it next year, said she still has concerns about the timing but regards concerns about its stature internationally as secondary.

“I see it as more of a cultural exchange, where people of different nations have an opportunity to experience each other,” Spencer said. “The arts are a good way to do that. That’s why I support the concept.”

Beeb Salzer, a San Diego State University drama professor, was critical of the festival before the detailed budget was submitted Thursday, and he said learning the details hasn’t changed his mind.

“It’s a very minor group of events,” Salzer said. “Nobody is going to come from out of town to see these things. It’s not a world-stage festival. And again, becoming a cultural leader in the world requires exporting arts rather than importing arts.”

Salzer said the Symphony, which will be host to a series of concerts with a Soviet conductor and soloists, can get any number of Soviet artists and that Soviet dissidents who have immigrated from the Soviet Union are probably as good as or better than the guest artists envisioned for the festival.

“The chefs are really too silly to even talk about,” he said, then added a second thought. “Oh, well, if you’re going to have eggs, you might as well have chefs.”