The Charitable Alberto Vilar – Superstar Patron of the Performing Arts…is a Thief?

Last week’s arrest of Cuban-American Alberto Vilar on charges of criminal fraud drew gasps throughout the world of performing arts that were louder than those heard when Luciano Pavarotti croaked at an opening-night performance at Milan’s La Scala in 1992. After all, Vilar had become as popular in the art world for his charitable giving as Pavarotti was for his flawless singing.

In fact, here’s a tally of some of the nouveau riche largesse Vilar dispensed over just the past five years:

$45 million to the Met in New York, £18 million ($25 million) to Covent Garden in London, $20 million to Valery Gergiev’s Kirov company in St Petersburg, $10 million plus to Placido Domingo’s Los Angeles Opera and sundry single-digit million dollar gifts to directors at Carnegie Hall, Salzburg, Bayreuth, Glyndebourne and La Scala for productions that he fancied seeing.

Vilar (center) posing proudly with two of his more high-profile beneficiaries Valery Gergiev (left) and Placido Domingo.

But Vilar’s initiation into the elite club of American philanthropists was only grudgingly recognized when he made a dramatic donation to the Kennedy Center for the Performing in Washington, DC that was duly reported in the Washington Post on 14 February 2001 as follows:

Alberto W. Vilar, a Cuban-born billionaire and art patron, is giving the Kennedy Center $50 million, the largest donation ever to the 30-year-old performing arts center. “I am passionate about the classical performing arts. And within the world of opera, I like lyric or Verdian-type opera, Wagnerian and Russian” he said. This donation of the America businessman establishes him as one of the most generous patrons of the performing arts in modern history.

In return for his (ego) maniacal generosity, beneficiaries dutifully indulged his vanity by prominently displaying Vilar’s name on their premises. Indeed, the larger than life Donald Trump was probably pouting with signage envy as Vilar’s name appeared in lights so promiscuously all over the world (including at the Vilar Floral Hall at London’s Covent Garden, the Vilar Grand Tier at the New York Met and the Vilar Titel (seatback surtitles) at the Vienna Opera – where he also gets a full glossy page of gratitude in every program).

Nevertheless, to his credit, it must be noted that Vilar had a truly enviable record of achievement before his vanity and obsession with the performing arts led him astray. After all, here was a poor immigrant who – through his own initiative – became a shrewd money manager (with investments in Microsoft, AOL, e-bay and other tech stocks that paid-off big) and was now living the American dream of the Guggenheims, Carnegies and Rockefellers.

But Vilar was not content just to rub shoulders with those who were to the manor born. Because, evidently, he took seriously the fatuous talk amongst his fellow patrons that he was the cultural heir to King Ludwig of Bavaria – Wagner’s spendthrift and eccentric benefactor who was undoubtedly history’s most promiscuous patron of the arts. (Perhaps it was this misguided association that motivated Vilar to switch a $25 million development project from Carnegie Hall to the Berlin Philharmonic.)

At any rate, after the downturn in the financial markets a few years ago, Vilar’s liquid fortune quickly ran dry and he was caught in the untenable position of defaulting on mortgages that triggered foreclosures on his 3 homes. But for Vilar, the more humiliating bind was being unable to fulfill many of his outstanding charitable pledges. And, it was at this point that his foolish pride betrayed him. Because only a little humility would have counseled him to concede readily (and without shame) that unforeseen circumstances made it impossible for him to honor those pledges. (An explanation that Ted Turner gave the UN concerning his $1 billion pledge and one which even the Rockefellers have used to unburden themselves from unsustainable charitable commitments.)

Instead, Vilar did what, interestingly enough, the certifiably insane Ludwig might have done in similar circumstances: He is alleged to have misappropriated $5 million from a client to honour some of his charitable pledges including one of $540,000 to his alma mater Washington & Jefferson after the college promised to name a building in his honour.

Now he sits infamously in a prison cell no doubt contemplating the ignominious fate that has befallen him. And to add to his woes, Vilar faces a growing list of civil complaints – topped by the SEC – which will likely force him to give up what little remains of his billion dollar fortune.

But the gasps that greeted the news of his arrest have given way to glee and schadenfreude amongst the cultural elite who always regarded him as a poseur and an interloper. And, frankly, it serves him right! After all, Robin Hood he was not. Indeed, if Vilar had pledged more money to build cultural centers in the ghettos and barrios and less trying to emulate rich WASPS, he would be a truly sympathetic tragic hero.

Alas, he is living a pathetic reversal of fortune where – despite the hundreds of millions spent to cultivate an image as distant from his Cuban heritage as white is from black – he has still ended up in the same place as many of his fellow immigrants whose names were never worth much more than a dime….