Skipping The Antipasti

Those who turned up for the appetizers got the whole meal free, but nearly one-third of the 170,000 fans who visited the six-day Arezzo Wave Love Festival still decided to skip the starters and pay five euros just to have the main course.

Event director Mauro Valenti agreed that it’s odd for a nation renowned for making a meal out of enjoying a meal to only want the main fare or – in this case – the headline act. But he was still pleased the free festival’s decision to charge five euros to latecomers raised euro 250,000 (around US$316,000) for Arezzo’s coffers.

“Italians have this tendency to go to the concerts with the biggest names, which differs from other European nations where the people attend festivals right from the very first note,” Valenti explained.

The money will come in handy as the Tuscany regional authority has cut its financial support by more than half since 2005, and Arezzo’s town council is embroiled in such scandal that it couldn’t stump up anything for this year’s 20th anniversary bash.

Mayor Luigi Lucherini and three other Arezzo councillors were stripped of office and are facing charges of “abusing their power” over a local planning issue.

Commissioner Roberto Rossi was appointed to run the town up to the time of the May elections, which saw the current center-left coalition take over. As he was only in charge for a couple of months, it seems that Rossi – or the Sostituto Procuratore della Repubblica presso il Tribunale di Arezzo, to give him his full title – either didn’t feel he could guarantee future funding beyond his ad hoc term or maybe just had other issues higher up the pile.

With his budget down to euro 1.2 million (US$1.52 million), Valenti was still pleased to put together a bill that had Sinead O’Connor, Skin, Marky Ramone, Laurent Garnier, Carl Craig, CocoRosie, Who Made Who, Alex Neri & Planet Funk and a final-night sellout from Italian superstar Gianna Nannini.

About 50,000 fans thought those acts were worth paying to see, even though 120,000 did turn up before the 9:15 p.m. watershed and saw the rest of the July 11-16 bill the festival was keen to showcase.

Whatever the fans chose to do, it worked out fine for Valenti. Either they take advantage of the early free entry and see the smaller developing acts – which he prefers – or they come later and make what turned out to be a significant contribution to Arezzo’s funds.

With Giuseppe Fanfani’s center-left party now running the city, Valenti is clear to lobby for a little more cash for 2007, and he has bigger plans to spread Arezzo’s name on a global basis.

“Now our main goal is to organize the first Italian festival in Japan. Thanks to the media partnership with Radio J-Wave, Tokyo’s main station, we’ll take the best Italian acts there and organize a mini Arezzo Wave,” he told Pollstar.

Radio J-Wave broadcast from this year’s festival and is already planning to slot the Italian talent alongside the best available Japanese acts.

Valenti and Fondazione Arezzo Wave Italia, the non-profit organization that runs the festival, are also planning a special Italian showcase for January’s Eurosonic-Noorderslag weekend in Holland.

Conference-turned-festival creative director Peter Smidt, project manager Ruud Berends and talent booker Robert Meijerink were at this year’s festival to give a presentation of the European Talent Exchange Programme (ETEP), of which the Italian talent focus will form a part.

– John Gammon