L'Italo-Americano

www.italoamericano.org 18 L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2019 LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE D ear Readers, earth- quakes in California recently had me re- calling a couple with an "Italian con- nection." Back in 1906, the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso ran screaming in his pajamas from his room at the Palace Hotel and, as the ground around him heaved and shook, he vowed never again to return. After a big earthquake had devastated the Italian town of Morra De Sanctis and dozens of small towns over a 10,000 square mile radius in Italy in late No- vember 1980, it was another fa- mous tenor, Luciano Pavarotti, who, in mid 198, performed at the San Francisco Civic Audito- rium in A Benefit of Love from San Francisco to Morra De Sanc- tis. The chairperson of the event was not a professional event planner but an amateur Italian- American. Lita Di Grazia Víctor. Lita managed to get so many goods and services donated, that after the Benefit there were still funds enough to do some more. In November 1980, the name of this small town not far from Naples swept the city of San Francisco. Morra De Sanctis was adopted by many civic organiza- tions which initiated a vigorous and generous campaign to collect funds for its reconstruction. Although the quake wrecked half the village and killed 50 cit- izens, Morra De Sanctis was luckier than the other 209 ruined Italian towns - it had been "adopted" by San Francisco's Italian-Americans, who raised $110,000 for its revival. Morra's Mayor, Rocco Pag- notta, flew into San Francisco to express his gratitude and raise more money. Among the early donors for the earthquake victims, where the Italian-American police officers in San Francisco who raised over 10,000 dollars for the Italian earthquake relief fund, via a Ben- efit Buffet and Cocktail Dance. *** In San Francisco, it was the 1981 Lita Di Grazia Vietor- chaired Pavarotti Fund-Raiser for Italy's Quake Victims that Bene- fit chairpersons everywhere would like to emulate. So why did Lita Di Grazia Vi- etor- the amateur who accom- plished this - sometimes awaken at night in the rich silence of her sumptuous Presidio Heights home to say of the concert, "It's a failure"? It all makes sense if you are willing to go back to a wintry day in January, when elegant Vietor had to attend a somber meeting of businessmen  at the Italian Consulate in San Francisco. The subject was how to raise money to help rebuild the dam- age and relieve the suffering in- flicted in Italy over a 10,000- square-mile area by the terrible earthquake of November 23, that killed more than 3000 people, in- jured more than 8000, leveled thousands of buildings and left 250,000 homeless. More than $12 billion worth of damage was done in the worst natural disaster in Europe in 50 years. The flow of individual contri- butions from the Bay Area, rang- ing from $2 to $10,000, had been generous enough, but much more was needed. There was hopeful talk of raising as much as $1 mil- lion, the money to be earmarked for the small village of Morra De Sanctis outside of Naples, where the irrigation system and the cheese-making cooperative had been destroyed. By the time the meeting was over, Vietor had been asked to assume a breathtaking assign- ment: putting together some sort of concert that somehow would raise $250,000. By definition, this obviously meant a superstar draw agreement to work for nothing. Vietor had run the American Conservatory Theater fund-rais- ers for the past five years - fairly simple affairs where rich and fa- mous folk decorate Christmas trees and tables and the lower or- ders pay to come and gape - but this was stepping  into the big leagues. "They said, 'we really need you,'" she recalls. "It was an offer I couldn't refuse." Even thinking about getting Pavarotti - who was booked five years ahead and gets $50,000 a concert - was uncommon chutz- pah. Vietor induced the coopera- tion of Maria Pia Fanfani, wife of Amintore Fanfani, Italian Prime Minister at the time. Life never passed up an opportunity to demonstrate afresh it's not what you know, but who. Madame Fanfani talked to Pavarotti - circumventing the sleepless vigil of his hard-boiled and grasping manager, Herbert Breslin - and put it to him that it was his duty as a patriotic Italian to come to San Francisco and sing for nothing. Thus began the planning that led to the Pavarotti Earthquake Concert, an affair that Vietor rue- fully come to admit is a case les- son in the perils of thinking small. What Vietor realized is that the concert was a monster success be- fore it had scarcely left the rumor stage. MGM, which was planning a movie starring Pavarotti, decided to make a hefty contribution to help defray the $30,000 cost of hiring the opera orchestra and agreed to the decoration of the auditorium for the right to film the event. Vietor came up with the idea of a private black tie dinner after the concert where bread would be broken with Pavarotti. This would cost up to $250 a head for the "Celebrity guest circle." But just to be eligible to buy one of these tickets,  you had to sell out $100 for one of the orchestra seats. Vietor came up with a can't fail way of fattening the take from Pavarotti's visit, fill the Opera House with paying guests who would watch the Civic Audito- rium concert on closed-circuit television and then would after- ward be treated to an aria or two by the artist in person. She got the Huntington Hotel to put up the great tenor for noth- ing, got a discount from London Records for some Pavarotti al- bums to be sold in the lobby and talked to Alitalia about a free flight to Naples for some lucky winner of a raffle. In between all of this, Vietor had to put up with the insolence of a man she called "the ogre Breslin." the singer's manager whose cooperation could only charitably be called grudging. Some say this is because he won't be collecting a commission inas- much as this is benefit. "He'll call up and say, 'Give Pavarotti a horse.'" "A horse? 'Yes. Give him a horse for doing this event.'" If it's not that, he is shouting for first-class air fare from Italy to San Francisco or seeking some other pecuniary edge he thought of. I will never return to San Fran- cisco vowed a shaken Caruso the day after 1906 Quake. Pavarotti loved San Francisco and he came back in the fall of 1981 to sold out appearances. ***

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