San Diego’s Soviet Arts Festival Was a Step in Right Direction for the City : Culture: Becoming a player in the world arts scene seldom happens overnight. But San Diego has entered the fray and its reputation will be made over time. : ANALYSIS

Well, it’s over. San Diego’s first international arts festival--Treasures of the Soviet Union--officially came to a close Sunday.

Did the event, as mayor and festival founder Maureen O’Connor predicted, enhance the city’s “public image as a player on the international arts scene”? Did it transform San Diego, as she anticipated, “from an also-ran city to a cultural power”? Did the festival, as she hoped, get the attention of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times?

Critical reviews of festival events stopped considerably short of the mayor’s hyperbole, and press coverage didn’t include several major East Coast publications, but neither did the festival seem “thrown together” as some early naysayers accused.

Becoming a player on the international arts scene seldom happens overnight, and usually not after one test. San Diego’s cultural reputation, as defined by this triennial festival, will be made over time. But all things considered, the journey isn’t off to a bad start.

The primary measure of a festival’s artistic success comes from how, and where, it is critically received.

The artistic high point of the festival was undoubtedly “Brothers and Sisters,” the epic production by the Maly Theater, which received its U.S. premiere at the Old Globe. National coverage of the play included glowing reviews in the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, Variety, the Los Angeles Times and both Chicago papers--the Tribune and the Sun-Times.

But the New York Times--the newspaper that first wrote about the play more than a year ago--chose to avoid it in San Diego.

“We are not reviewing it for the simple reason that our main responsibility is to major openings in New York,” said Frank Rich, theater critic for the New York Times, who is among the most respected theater critics in the United States.

“For us, that would be true of any out-of-town production, whether it be in San Diego or Philadelphia. There was no way to justify our going to San Diego to review ‘Brothers and Sisters,’ which we had written about before. As you know, the play was supposed to premiere in New York but didn’t because the people trying to put it together couldn’t come up with the money.”

But the Maly production did impress a representative of a national theater organization based in New York.

Lindy Zesch, associate director of the Theatre Communications Group--of which all of San Diego’s major theaters are members--sounded like a billboard of superlatives in saying that the impact of “Brothers and Sisters” on the American theatrical community was “enormous . . . stupendous . . . marvelous.” She said that based on “Brothers and Sisters” alone, the San Diego arts festival had to be considered a major success. And, if anything, she said, it only serves to bolster the “already eminent reputation” of the Old Globe Theatre.

“ ‘Brothers and Sisters’ is a major, major theatrical work,” Zesch said by telephone from New York. “And apart from the play itself”--which Zesch said she came to San Diego to see--”I would say the San Diego festival is a model for the country as a whole. I would call it a tremendous success--absolutely.”

Most of the national press coverage paid only perfunctory attention to the rest of the festival. The San Diego

Opera’s production of “Boris Godunov” was briefly mentioned by USA Today and the Sun-Times, which also made passing reference to the San Diego Repertory Theater’s world premiere production of “Slingshot.”

The festival’s music presentations had no premieres on a par with “Brothers and Sisters.”

The San Diego Opera netted strong reviews for “Boris Godunov,” which featured five Soviet singers in key roles and a Soviet conductor.

But Richard Dyer, music critic for the Boston Globe, called the opera “an old standby.”

Dyer said Boston’s 1988 Soviet festival--”Making Music Together”--was, in his opinion, far more compelling than anything San Diego offered.

The Boston festival’s musical offerings included the world premiere of “Dead Souls,” an opera based on a novel by Nikolai Gogol, with music by Rodion Shchedrin.

The chorus and cast were equally divided among Americans and Soviets, Dyer said, pointing out that a 50-50 exchange was the purpose of “Making Music Together.” In that respect, Boston’s festival was celebrated not only for being the first of its kind but for innovativeness in concept, for taking chances artistically. Every single one of its works was contemporary, Dyer said.

The 17-piece Soloists of Leningrad ensemble made its North American debut at the San Diego festival, performing alone and with the San Diego Symphony in a program that included the U.S. premiere of a work by Soviet composer Vladimir Tarnopolsky and the world premiere of a work by American Joseph Schwantner commissioned for the festival.

In another program, the symphony performed the West Coast premiere of a work by Shchedrin, but the San Diego festival couldn’t deliver something Shchedrin brought to the Boston festival--his wife, the legendary Maya Plisetskaya of the Bolshoi Ballet.

In fact, ballet, arguably the Soviet Union’s greatest cultural export, was conspicuous by its absence at the San Diego festival. The festival’s short lead time precluded booking a major Soviet ballet troupe. The Kirov Ballet, for example, was already committed to a tour that included a stop in Orange County earlier this year.

Artistry aside, festival organizers also faced a tremendous administrative challenge, and seemed to fare better on that count than their Boston counterparts.

Having had a year to reflect, Dyer said Boston’s festival was a financial and administrative failure, a fiasco characterized by chaos and a laughably Byzantine bureaucracy that attempted to coordinate artists who had never before worked together and did not share the same language.

“Just to do that,” he said, “took a bravery of the highest order.”

San Diego festival organizers were just as brave, spurred on by the determined O’Connor, who was often defensive about the event and who took every opportunity to admonish doubters. The final numbers aren’t in yet, but the festival also seems to have fared well financially, judging from the number of sold-out events.

That gives the mayor at least some ammunition for defending the festival’s future. She has said, inadvertently addressing one of the criticisms of her leadership, that she will leave future festival planning “to the professionals.”

She also has said the 1992 festival should thematically recognize the 500-year celebration of the founding of the New World. That, too, will be a challenge since so much attention is being paid internationally to the anniversary and distinguished artists and works will be at a premium.

So if the 1992 festival goes according to the mayor’s wishes, there will be this bit of irony: The world’s cultural community will be celebrating the discovery of America, while the mayor, playing a latter day Queen Isabella, will be trying to pave the way for the world’s cultural community to discover San Diego.

Related review, F1