IN THE BEGINNING
Melbourne businessman and philanthropist Marc Besen
and his wife, Eva, have always loved going to festivals.
/ In the Beginning
“
Bini drew Grant’s
attention to the Festival
of Two Worlds: why not
make it three?
”
3
SPOLETO
MELBOURNE
/ Poster Art by
Sidney Nolan /
1986 01
Marc and Eva Besen first went to Austria’s Salzburg Festival on their
honeymoon in 1950. In the 1970s they heard about the Spoleto Festival,
established by composer Gian Carlo Menotti in the Italian state of Umbria.
They found it the opposite of Salzburg: instead of wealthy music-lovers in
dinner suits, it was full of jeans-clad students and had both artistic energy
and a laid-back mood. The Besens fell in love with Spoleto, started going
regularly and got to know Menotti. Over the ensuing years a friendship
developed and Menotti, with his sights set on Australia, discovered a
potential third location for the Spoleto Festival, which had already expanded
into Charleston, South Carolina.
Festivals had burgeoned across Europe after WWII. Not only were
they wonderful for local morale, but they brought a much-needed economic
boost via tourism to the war-ravaged regional towns in which they were
established.
Avignon, Edinburgh, Aix-en-Provence and Dubrovnik are among the
cities that now have world-famous festivals established within five years
of the war’s end in Europe. In Australia, Perth and Adelaide already had
festivals, established in 1953 and 1960 respectively, which were conceived
along European lines: as eruptions of activity to punctuate a quiet cultural
landscape.
Melbourne in the 1980s was neither war-ravaged nor a sleepy
hollow in need of revitalisation. It had a lively theatre scene, including edgy
political theatre. Home to The Australian Ballet, it also supported an excellent
local opera company, the Victoria State Opera, as well as the national
company’s regular visits. It was the Australian city least likely to justify the
arts in purely instrumental terms: the arts, for Melbourne’s politicians on
both sides of the House, had never just been about jobs or tourism.
As early as 1977, a previous Liberal Premier Rupert Hamer had
commissioned a scoping study for a festival. It was considered then that the
new Victorian Arts Centre—due for completion between 1982 and 1984—
might be the focus and that any further planning for a festival should wait for
a clearer statement of its purpose and programming from those who would
run it when it was finished
In 1982, the President of the Melbourne Italian Festival, Luciano
Bini, visited Bruce Grant, the Arts Minister’s advisor. His Festival had been
providing a small but vibrant celebration of Italian culture centred around
the Italian precinct of Lygon Street, Carlton. Bini drew Grant’s attention to
the Festival of Two Worlds: why not make it three? The synergy with the
Melbourne Italian Festival was clear: it was an opportune launch pad for
Spoleto in Melbourne and an obvious conduit between Australia and Italy.