Other People S Money

In the last 11 months, having ignored new American music for 25 years, the Metropolitan Opera in New York City has premiered Corigliano’s “The Ghosts of Versailles” and Philip Glass’s “The Voyage,” both sellouts. Now, the Lyric Opera of Chicago is presenting “McTeague,” the first American commission in its ambitious “Toward the 21st Century” project. For his first fall foray into the genre (he has written music-theater pieces), William Bolcom lit on Frank Norris’s 1989 novel that was the source of Erich von Stroheim’s 1924 film “Greed.”

With lust, avarice, murder, a madwoman and what passes for a bohemian garret, the tale all but demands grand-opera treatment. New music can be a tough sell, so before the recent “McTeague” premiere, the Lyric brought out the big guns. It offered a screening of “Greed” and a high-octane symposium with Bolcom; librettist Arnold Weinstein; filmmaker Robert Altman, the opera’s director and co-librettist, and Bette Howland, a literary scholar and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient. So glittery was the assemblage that Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, who spoke briefly about Norris’s novel, referred to himself as “an auxiliary item.”

Bolcom, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988, helped spark the ragtime revival and has keyed up interest in Victorian parlor songs. Echoes of the past, devoid of sentimentality, and shifting, dancing rhythms suffuse “McTeague” and may make it the most American opera, in range, grit and pulse, since Douglas Moore’s “The Ballad of Baby Doe” (1956). The tense, telescoped version of the story opens in Death Valley, where the huge, doltish McTeague (Ben Heppner) is on the run. It then flashes back to the poky streets of San Francisco, where McTeague is an unlicensed dentist, strong enough to yank out a tooth with his bare hands. A lumbering innocent, he falls in love with Trina (Catherine Malfitano), the girlfriend of his pal Marcus Schouler (Timothy Nolen). When Trina wins the lottery, everyone’s fortunes plummet. Trina becomes a miser. Schouler, who thinks he’s entitled to half the loot because he “gave” Trina to his friend, turns in McTeague to the health authorities before going off with crazy Maria Macapa (Emily Golden) on a hopeless hunt for gold. When Trina refuses to share her money with McTeague, he kills her. Schouler tracks him to Death Valley, where they meet a grisly end.

Despite its grimness, the opera has some high-spirited moments, including a giddy first-act duet for Schouler and McTeague. Bolcom wanted to capture “the cadence of American speech” and pulls it off, even when setting lines of halting rhyme. He excels at concisely sketching character or atmosphere eroticism, violence, blinding heat; there’s a tinkling, edgy recurring theme that suggests the seductive power of gold. Where “McTeague” falls short is in musical cohesiveness: one musical idea doesn’t always lead to the next. It’s like a quilt in which only some of the pieces have been stitched together, while others may be better suited to a different pattern. But the performers, abetted by conductor Dennis Russell Davies and Altman’s astonishing direction, raise “McTeague” to a higher level. All strong singers, they alternately trap and abandon emotion, literally throwing themselves around the stage. Nolen, who has an acrobat’s controlled grace, uses a grin that progresses, in a microsecond, from playful to oleaginous to satanic. Jack Nicholson would envy it.

title: “Other People S Money” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-09” author: “Leonard Faber”

People seldom associate charitable works with lavishness, which helps explain why such furor erupted when it became known that the president of United Way of America traveled first class to meetings and is still earning $390,000. In some ways, William Aramony is unusual; few charity executives make quite as much as he did. But in other ways, his charity’s behavior helps puncture a myth: not all nonprofit groups are necessarily spartan to the core or carefully monitored. Occasionally, the people who run charities steal from donors. More commonly, regulators and watchdog groups report, charities simply waste or mismanage their funds.

An obvious and important caveat: most charities are lean, worthy and effective. The officials and staff routinely earn less than in the private sector, often for more work. After the disappointing charity ball in 1990, the Cancer Society in D.C. redoubled its efforts and doubled its take at the next year’s ball. In previous years almost half their revenues had come from such events, which help involve big-money donors in the cause. Nationally, 76 cents of every dollar the charity spends goes to actual program services, and the ratio is roughly the same at most big charities. Of the 366 major charities that the New York-based National Charities Information Bureau has sought data from, two thirds meet all of the watchdog group’s standards. But admiration for the nonprofit sector, and fear that criticism might dry up donations, have exempted most charities from even healthy scrutiny.

For all of United Way’s troubles, it has not been accused of the ugliest offense in the charity world: failing to spend most of what it raises on the needy. While the charity-watchdog groups say most major charities spend more than two thirds of their donations on their causes, some well-known national groups lay out far less. The Shriners Hospitals for Crippled Children spent just 52.5 percent ($217 million) of their annual revenue on the hospitals in 1990. The Council of Better Business Bureaus in the past has criticized Shriners Hospitals’ spending policies. But Lewis K. Molnar, executive vice president of the Shriners Hospitals, says most of the remaining money is invested to provide additional income to keep pace with inflation and meet future needs. Also, The Orlando Sentinel in 1986 reported that the temples of the Shrine of North America, a related fraternal organization, were raising money through charity circuses ostensibly for the hospitals, but were keeping much of the proceeds for temple uses. A Shrine spokesperson says the Shrine now states on fund-raising material whether the money raised will go to the temples or the hospitals. The Maryland-based Walker Cancer Research Institute raised $2.4 million-but spent less than a penny of each dollar on cancer research. Fifty-four percent went to fund raising and administration and 44 percent went to “public education” efforts, such as advising potential donors to stop smoking and “keep your workplace free of cancer hazards.” Officials of the center refused to comment. Even the American Red Cross drew sharp criticism in 1989 for admitting it was going to take money raised specifically for Loma Prieta earthquake victims and spend it on other disasters. After community leaders and local Red Cross officials protested, the charity shifted gears, promising to pour the more than $70 million contributed for the earthquake into the area. Red Cross officials say their new policy is to spend all money raised for a specific disaster on those victims.

As government social-service spending has waned, charities must “fight harder for each dollar,” says Sheila Fishman, assistant attorney general of Minnesota. Some compete by delivering more charity for the buck, yet others turn to expensive direct-mail firms that increase the number of donors but eat up revenue in the process. These days, charity experts contend, you must spend more to raise more.

Hefty salaries for charity officials certainly create problems of symbolism, but there are some practical justifications. Nonprofits are notoriously difficult to run, so if generous compensation attracts better top brass-and that’s sometimes a big if–high pay can be a worthwhile investment. Bloat at the top can waste thousands of dollars, but it’s bad management that can lead to disaster. The Food and Drug Administration four years ago warned that the Red Cross’s oversight system had become so erratic that some labs weren’t adequately screening blood for the AIDS virus. The FDA says it has no evidence that tainted blood reached the public. The Red Cross acknowledged its problems and embarked on an ambitious $138 million plan to consolidate blood centers and develop a computer system to “triple-check” their blood samples. “We will continue to have the safest blood in the world,” says Brian Ruberry, a Red Cross spokesman.

When officials do stray from the path of righteousness and good management, the system of checks can fail, too. In the private sector, management mess-ups will eventually be noticed in the form of reduced profits, declining stock prices or critical evaluations from investment houses. In the nonprofit world, the watchdog function falls almost entirely to the board of directors-who are often chosen mostly for their ability to raise money. Take the Covenant House scandal, in which Father Bruce Ritter was forced to resign amid charges that he had sex with young men the group had rescued from the streets and had taken a personal loan from a Covenant House trust fund. Why didn’t the board head off the trouble? Ritter himself chose the members and kept them on one-year terms. “If you were a troublemaker, the chances are you would not have been asked to serve again,” says one former board member. “The members were there as resources, not as overseers. " Ritter denied the sexual allegations and paid back the loan in question. The new management seems to have stopped the decline in donations that followed the scandal. At United Way, the blue-chip directors had other things to do besides scrutinize the charity, such as run Sears. Several directors serve on multiple boards. (A United Way spokesman insisted that the board has been very involved in general oversight.)

In theory, government watches over charities, but in practice it must focus on egregious cases of misconduct rather than run-of-the-mill waste. Several states tried to require charities to dedicate a certain portion of donations to program services, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the law to be unconstitutional. The Internal Revenue Service monitors charities to ensure they deserve tax-exempt status. But while the IRS audited about 7 percent of returns from charities in the mid-1960s, today it looks at roughly 1 percent. Marcus Owens, head of the exempt organizations technical division, says the IRS is scrutinizing the growing numbers of nonprofits that are setting up commercial enterprises to raise money.

Charities are terrified that the United Way’s bad publicity will dampen the spirit of giving. But it could have several salutary effects. Boards of directors will now be wary about approving big salary increases. And at least 34 states require charities to give information about how much they spend on administrative expenses; perhaps more donors will now read that fine print. Some charities might fear that prospect, but only the ones that have forgotten their ultimate purpose should worry.

Major charities vary widely in how they spend your donation. A sampling of major groups:

AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY $362.3 MILLION ANNUAL BUDGET

76 percent to research and services. Makes frequent use of charity balls.

AMERICAN RED CROSS $1.4 BILLION ANNUAL BUDGET

92 percent to programs. But faced criticism over blood labs and earthquake relief.

MOTHERS AGAINST DRUNK DRIVING $52.3 MILLION ANNUAL BUDGET

71 percent to programs in 1991, up significantly in recent years.

SHRINERS HOSPITALS $412 MILLION ANNUAL REVENUE

$217 million directly to the sick, but almost as much goes to an endowment fund.

LOCAL UNITED WAYS $3.1 BILLION IN FUNDS RAISED ANNUALLY

85 percent to member charities. Locals worry scandal will reduce donations.

SOURCE: NEWSWEEK CALCULATIONS BASED ON STATEMENTS PROVIDED BY THE CHARITIES

title: “Other People S Money” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-11” author: “Tomas Rizzo”