A Big Border Run for Mainly Mozart

SAN DIEGO — Across the border, the Catedral de Nuestra Sen~ora de Guadalupe is a popular Tijuana picture postcard. Its twin bell towers, ornately carved larger-than-life wooden doors and jewel-tone icon of the Virgin of Guadalupe evoke the splendor of Mexico’s Spanish Colonial architectural heritage, a pleasant contrast to the city’s dusty, bustling commercial district just a few blocks away.

But what is Tijuana’s cathedral doing prominently displayed on brochures for San Diego’s ninth annual Mainly Mozart Festival?

For Nancy Laturno, Mainly Mozart’s executive director, the answer is easy: When it comes to classical music, San Diego can no longer afford to draw the line at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Our growth artistically and fiscally has been tied to our expansion in Baja California,” Laturno explains. “We simply could not flourish without the Baja connection.”

This year’s Mainly Mozart Festival, which opens in Tijuana Friday and runs on both sides of the border through June 14, has a total of six venues in Mexico, up from four last year and two in 1993, the first year the festival went binational. Six of this season’s 16 concerts will take place in Baja, at sites in Mexicali, Rosarito and Ensenada, as well as Tijuana.

And Mainly Mozart is not the only San Diego musical institution looking to cement ties to Baja California. San Diego Opera supports a major educational outreach into Mexico; the La Jolla Chamber Music Society plans to extend its educational program to Tijuana this fall; and the San Diego Symphony, before it fell into bankruptcy last year, also attempted to cross the border.

Part of the impetus to go south has to do with the nature of music, which needs no translation from English to Spanish.

“A musical organization is much more readily presented across the border than theater, for example,” Laturno notes. But the stronger motivation has to do with the perilous nature of presenting classical music in San Diego, a city that recently lost not only its symphony orchestra but also its 100,000-watt classical FM station.

“If we had found that San Diego audiences were willing to support as many concerts as we wanted to present, then we might not be looking to this regional strategy,” Laturno adds.

Of course, establishing a successful cross-border connection is no simple task, and the current programs of Mainly Mozart and San Diego Opera each grew out of past failures.

In the ‘80s, the opera increased its audience base by setting up a Mexican branch of its support group, the Opera Guild. When that fizzled, says Roger Pines, the opera company’s educational director from 1989 to 1995, the group turned to a more basic strategy: “We thought if we could get the kids interested in opera, the adults would follow.”

Outreach began in 1993, when San Diego Opera first presented one-hour, small-cast versions of operas with Spanish dialogue to Mexican students. Last season, 25 such performances of Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” were staged, and Spanish-speaking artist-in-residence in Tijuana presented eight lecture-recitals. Also, the opera bused 1,000 students from Baja to final dress rehearsals of San Diego Opera’s Civic Theatre productions.

Mainly Mozart has adopted a different approach. Laturno’s first experience with developing Mexican audiences came in the mid-’80s, when she was head of public relations for the San Diego Symphony. The orchestra made a one- shot attempt at exporting itself. “We held press conferences, did a lot of publicity, and made what we thought were the right contacts,” Laturno recall. “But our ticket sales were poor, and we barely filled a third of the 1,000-seat cultural center hall.”

In 1992, with Mainly Mozart, Laturno and festival co-founder conductor David Atherton decided on a slower, grass-roots strategy. They tapped festival board member Arthur Porras, a noted San Diego interior designer with a significant Baja clientele. Porras led a delegation from Mainly Mozart to the home of Tijuana resident Maria Juana Cohen.

“We met with nine women Maria had pulled together. We suggested the idea of a festival presence in Tijuana--not a San Diego organization crossing the border to throw off a concert or two, but establishing a meaningful ongoing presence in their community,” Laturno says.

At a trial concert that year, held in Cohen’s home, 180 attendees indicated interest in supporting a Mainly Mozart experiment in Tijuana. The following season, the festival orchestra went to Tijuana and Mexicali, under the banner Festival Internacional de Mozart. Each city had its own organizing committee and its own list of patrons and commercial benefactors listed in the program book.

“When Mainly Mozart is in Tijuana, we are really a Tijuana organization,” Laturno explains. “The members of the Tijuana committee give the press conferences and sell the tickets. They are the ones on the radio giving interviews.”

To underscore the integration of the Baja committees’ work with the with Mainly Mozart’s overall governance, three of 12 Mainly Mozart board members are Mexican nationals, and another three Baja citizens serve on a 15-member advisory council.

Both San Diego Opera and Mainly Mozart are happy with the outcome of their programs. The opera can’t track specific increases in donations or box office, but, according to general director Ian Campbell, “the real success is the demand for our groups to return, the Mexican parents and teachers who believe it’s worthy for the kids.”

As for Mainly Mozart, its whole future is tied in with the Mexico connection. Each additional venue multiplies the gate for the festival’s imported talent. “It makes what we do in San Diego less expensive and allows us to bring top artists to both sides of the border,” says Laturno.

And some of the benefits of performing in Mexico never show up on the accountant’s bottom line. “The Mexican audiences there are very enthusiastic, intense and highly demonstrative,” Laturno says. “Then there’s the lavish party given by one of our Mexican patrons--the musicians call it the tequila party. Dancing that goes into the early hours of the morning makes them feel like they belong to the host’s family.”