He could be seen at the opera on up to a hundred and fifty evenings a year, plus fifty times in concerts.
The music world was at his feet.
Twenty years ago, his portrait was in every program booklet of the Salzburg Festival, with the note that we would like to thank “the greatest patron in the history of the Festival”.
The Metropolitan Opera in New York had his name carved in stone in the foyer above the entrance to the first tier: “Alberto Vilar Grand Tier”.
A big animal was Alberto Vilar, the son of a Cuban plantation owner, born on October 4th 1940 in the United States, without a doubt. He gave a helping hand to the project of a purely privately financed festival theater in Baden-Baden, which threatened to fail in 1998 before it had even started, by buying up all the tickets for the first guest performance of the conductor Valery Gergiev and giving them away. As the director at the time, Andreas Mölich-Zebhauser later recalled, he was “the most generous person I have ever met”. Gerard Mortier, celebrated by his followers for having allegedly turned the Salzburg Festival from a luxury event of the money elites during the Karajan era into an epicenter of contemporary art that was free of statehood, courted Vilar as much as he could.Eva Corino wrote unforgettably maliciously in the Berliner Zeitung that the ladies of Salzburg society had to smile constantly - Vilar was single! - Be careful not to tear the seams behind the ears from the lifting. The banker is said to have donated a total of $ 225 million to cultural institutions.
But in 2005 Vilar was arrested and three years later convicted of money laundering, securities and postal fraud; he remained in prison until 2018. Donald Kahn stepped in for the cost of building the “House for Mozart” in Salzburg, which he had promised to take over; The Met in New York had the inscription and plaque removed: Vilar owed her twenty million dollars. Today the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden is owned by the city and receives four million euros in structural aid from the state. The Met is currently cutting staff and salaries at the orchestra. Alberto Vilar died on Sunday night at the age of eighty. The promise of salvation of a predominantly privately financed musical culture should prove to be more tenacious. Because, as a rule, nothing is learned from experience with imposture.