Rescigno Resigns Dallas Opera Post

After 33 years as artistic director of Dallas Opera, Nicola Rescigno has resigned his post. The 73-year-old conductor, a founder of Chicago Lyric Opera in 1954, and a co-founder (with the late Lawrence Kelly) of the Dallas company three years later, gave his final performance with Dallas Opera last Sunday.

He did not hesitate to explain his reasons when reached by telephone in Texas: “For a long time, I have not been happy with the way (Dallas Opera general manager) Plato Karayanis was managing . . . the company, especially as his work affected the musical product.

“I believe his lack of knowledge and vision have impeded my job. And our performances have suffered as a result.” The “straw that broke my back,” Rescigno said, was the year-long negotiations with the musicians of the newly organized opera orchestra.

The Dallas Symphony, which performed for the opera company, became unavailable because of its new hall. Negotiations with the new opera orchestra were handled by Karayanis. Rescigno said Karayanis “drew out the talks for 10 months. And he would not meet the musicians’ price.

“Finally,” Rescigno said, “when the players realized they were not going to get what they asked for in terms of money, they resorted to asking for concessions.”

But those concessions--for instance regarding tenure and the rules governing substitute players--were, according to Rescigno, “not good from a musical point of view. In fact, they could be destructive. The difference in money was probably only $40,000, a sum most administrators can raise in 10 minutes. That was the last straw.”

The issue of musicians’ negotiations is absolutely crucial, Rescigno says, because “the orchestra is the soul of an opera company, and sets the whole tone of its quality.”

This week Rescigno goes to New York, his hometown, then to Italy and Yugoslavia for operatic engagements.

Through a spokesman for the company, director Karayanis declined to talk to the media about Rescigno’s grievances.

HEIFETZ’S VIOLIN: The “David” Guarneri del Gesu, the violin Jascha Heifetz concertized and recorded on for the half-century before his death, will be heard again, in a three-recital series at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

Stuart Canin, now a free-lance player in Southern California, and for 10 years (1970-80) concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony, will open the series Monday night. The instrument, made by Giuseppe Guarnerius of Cremona, Italy, in 1742, has a distinguished history. It is called the “David” Guarneri because it was owned in the mid-19th Century by the famous violinist and teacher, Ferdinand David, who gave the premiere performance of the Mendelssohn Concerto on it in 1845. Later, the instrument was owned by two other celebrated fiddlers of the time, August Wilhelmj and Florian Zajic.

After Zajic, the violin was acquired by the 21-year-old Heifetz in 1922. Virtually all of Heifetz’s recordings are said to have been made with this instrument. The legendary violinist, at his death in 1987, left the “David” Guarneri to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Under terms of the will, the violin will remain at the Palace of the Legion of Honor for a number of years, and will be played only “on special occasions by worthy performers,” according to a spokesman for the museums.

Last week, Canin, a Los Angeles resident for the past decade, said in a phone interview that he has now spent more than a week playing the “David” Guarneri, “always at the Legion of Honor, because it is not allowed off the premises,” and finds it, “amazing, truly a king of violins. It has a husky baritone voice that is nothing less than astonishing.”

Assisted by his brother, pianist Martin Canin of the Juilliard School faculty, violinist Canin will play sonatas by Vivaldi, Brahms and Hindemith and shorter works by Saint-Saens, Bloch and Paganini. After the recital, the violin, under heavy security, will remain on display at the Legion of Honor.

DANCE IN LONG BEACH: Gov. George Deukmejian’s final budget set aside $26.2 million for Cal State Long Beach to construct a performing arts complex primarily for its dance students.

The money, which is contingent upon the passing of a bond issue later this year, comes none too soon for Long Beach, the only Cal State campus to offer a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in dance. At the moment, students rehearse in a tent with a portable dance floor. The faculty works in a trailer. And the department of dance uses physical education rooms and off-campus dance studios to complement its borrowed non-air-conditioned room in the Theatre Arts Building.

“We’ve been holding down enrollment with dance because of the facilities,” said Wayne Sheley, dean for the School of Fine Arts. “We’re only taking one of six undergraduates at auditions.”

Sheley said plans for the new complex include seven dance studios, three classrooms and 15 faculty offices. Furthermore, a 1,200-seat performing arts theater and a 250- to 300-seat dance recital hall will be built there. CSLB, which has the largest visual and performing arts enrollment in the state, will offer a master of fine arts degree for graduate dance students in 1992, when the complex is scheduled to be ready.

The school hopes to lure top-notch acts to the facility, such as the Joffrey Ballet and the Long Beach Symphony. Sheley said that the school now brings in solo artists and small companies.

Associate Vice President of Physical Planning Jon Regnier explained why CSLB didn’t get the facility earlier.

“We’ve asked for it for a long time, but there are competing needs throughout,” he said. “Cal State always gets the students before we get the facilities.”

The Long Beach campus, which attracts 90% of its dance majors from in-state, has no plans to change that ratio once the complex is completed.