Wine, wedding and song STORY HIGHLIGHTSNext in a growing series of arts festivals opens Saturday in Cortona, ItalyNapa Valley's Festival del Sole staged more than 50 events in nine daysWineries engage in friendly rivalries, throwing lavish after-concert galasInternational artists cite chances to meet each other, community among lures

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Napa Valley's vineyards are one of three sites in anexpanding network of international cultural summits.

Fact BoxDel Sole Foundation Festivals

Cortona, ItalyTuscan Sun FestivalAugust 4-16

SingaporeSingapore Sun FestivalOctober 18-30

Napa Valley, CaliforniaFestival del SoleJuly 11-20, 2008

NAPA, California (CNN) -- If Barrett Wissman werein the ministry, his arts festivals would be sunnyoutposts on a fast-widening mission field. HisTuscan Sun Festival opens Saturday in Cortona,Italy. An all-new Singapore Sun Festival opensOctober 18.

And a secret known to missionaries everywhere isclearly in sway at the Festival del Sole in NapaValley, which has just concluded its second year:Bonding with the locals.

With quick fervor, local leaders, the hospitalityindustry and those all-important vintners of Napahave embraced their festival.

When symphony conductor Stéphane Denèvementioned last year that he'd like to get marriedthere, Tatiana and Gerret Copeland of theBouchaine wine estate threw the ceremony for

them in the vineyards. See images from a maestro's marriage in the vineyards of Napa during this year's Festival del Sole »

"It's a mission in my life to have more and more people enjoy and love the arts," Wissman says in aninterview sandwiched between Denève's presentation of the Grieg piano concerto and Prokofiev's "Romeoand Juliet" suite with the Russian National Orchestra.

Watch highlights and comments from Barrett Wissman and the artists of Festival del Sole »

"One of the reasons that we have these festivals -- engage local communities and have music, literature,art, film, cuisine, wine, all these subjects -- is we attract different people who like each one. And then getthem to like something else. Today, our goal in education in the arts is to get everybody involved."

Wissman is uniquely positioned to "get everybody involved."

More than a priest or even a bishop in this arts-mission field, he's a cardinal in the industry, the chairman ofIMG Artists, a major player in world artists' representation. IMG's roster includes violinists Joshua Bell andItzhak Perlman, mezzo-soprano Fredericka von Stade, flutist James Galway, guitarist ChristopherParkening, the Joffrey Ballet and composer Jay Greenberg, among many others.

Wissman has just announced a new managing director for IMG in North and South America, ElizabethSobol. She is, herself, a co-producer of a new festival in Boca Raton, Florida, and architect of a highlypublicized new joint venture for IMG with Gorfaine-Schwartz, the agency representing trumpeter-composerChris Botti, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, singer-songwriter James Taylor and Hollywood film composer John Williams.

No matter how far-flung the festivals and events, Wissman stays near his roots. "I'm a pianist," he says, "aconcert pianist. I still play, I play from time to time in the festivals. So I'm a musician, I come from the arts."

In the case of Napa's Festival del Sole, Wissman has a co-founder, San Francisco-based attorney RichardWalker, who has a specialization in artists' management.

Watch an audio slide show in which Richard Walker talks about the atmosphere of the festival »

Having worked with Mikhail Pletnev's Russian National Orchestra, Walker says, since its inception in 1990as the first symphonic entity founded after the Soviet Union's collapse, he emphasizes the stylistic rangedemanded in festival work.

And Walker echoes Wissman's interest in making these festivals oases in the itinerant lives of world-traveling artists. "The events that surround the musical performances," Walker says, "are attended by theartists, themselves -- a time of camaraderie for them because they see each other and spend time enjoyingeach other's company."

As if on cue, two world-class pianists, Polish-Hungarian Piotr Anderszewski and French-born Jean-YvesThibaudet, are seated at the same table at a gala post-concert dinner held by Far Niente wine estate on acloudless night in a circular arbor crowded with honeysuckle. Thibaudet jumps up at one point toaccompany violinist Bell in Manuel Ponce's "Estrellita," watched by composer Marco Tutino and cellist NinaKotova. Read about Joshua Bell's recent win of the $75,000 Fisher Prize

"We are located in a wonderful hotel," says conductor Denève, thenewlywed whose base of operations is Glasgow where he is musicdirector of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. "Wonderfulswimming pool, actually it's a great way to socialize and get to knowmore and more the fellow artists because usually you are engagedand just have one or two nights."

Thibaudet places a similar premium on these festivals' sense ofcommunity for artists. "When we have concerts," he says, "we justcome into town, we play and we leave. Usually there won't be any othersoloists, there's only you. So we never get to meet each other duringthe year."

And it appears that the Napa community couldn't be happier than tofind these major concert and recording artists "working the valley."

In a kind of vine-roots, if not grassroots, effort, the wineries havejumped with endearing eagerness into what Walker terms a "friendly competition" for whose after-concert

updated 12:46 p.m. EDT, Wed August 1, 2007

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gala can be the most opulent.

They lay on rich dinners set at starlit tables, some by glowing pools, others on cricket-chirpy hilltops andstill others under chandeliers hung high in some of the most honored wine-making facilities in the country.

One of the venues for the festival this year has been the Medieval-looking Castello di Amorosa, another therenovated Lincoln Theatre in Yountville.

Wineries participating in special events around an intensely proud sponsorship of the festival haveincluded Far Niente, the Copelands' Bouchaine Vineyards, Darioush Winery, Clos Pegase, Robert MondaviWinery, Peju Province Winery, Pine Ridge Winery and St. Supéry Vineyards and Winery. Many of these arefestival-funding partners, joined by Domaine Chandon, Blackbird Vineyards, Dalla Valle Vineyards,Plumpjack Winery, Folio Winemakers' Studio, Gargiulo Vineyards, Swanson Vineyards and COPIA, anonprofit center of wine-making culture in the valley.

The vintners, themselves, seem to enjoy the chance to mingle in thecommon interest of the festival and in the company of these artists theyseem to be tying onto their hearts like vine tendrils in their fields.

Margrit Mondavi is a welcome guest one evening at Far Niente, as areTatiana and Gerret Copeland of the Bouchaine house.

Florence's Maria Manetti Farrow, whose ranging Villa Mille Rose is an influential olive oil estate, seems tobe everyone's fondest table mate and every artist's favorite dinner companion.

Resort partners include Auberge du Soleil, Calistoga Ranch, Solage Calistoga, the Carneros Inn andSilverado Resort.

Walker, in fact, estimates that the Napa festival -- which with Cortona and Singapore is produced by thenonprofit Del Sole Foundation for the Arts and Humanities -- could cost as much as $10 million to stage, ifthe many in-kind services provided by hoteliers, wineries and others were totaled in cash.

The "rehearsals" for all this, if you will, took place in Cortona, where Wissman and Charles Letourneau,executive producer, have staged several years of festival events in what Wissman likes to call "a magical,Fellini-esque feel."

When he looked for a spot in the United States to base a sister festival, "Napa was the perfect place," closeto the metropolitan pace of San Francisco but removed enough to shelter artists and audiences in peace.

Wissman looks across a long, candlelit table amid shadowy greatbarrels of Bouchaine wine. French conductor Denève has TatianaCopeland's dinner guests in stitches with his tale of how he proposed

to his new wife on the glass floor high atop the Canada's National Tower in Toronto -- "My God, it wasfrightening!"

"One has to lead," says Wissman, Cortona's Saturday opening already occupying his thoughts. "Whendoing something important. No matter what your job is, no matter what your work is, you have to lead."E-mail to a friend

Official sponsors of the 2007 Festival de Sole include Auberge Resorts, Bouchaine Vineyards, Boucheron, Grove StreetWinery/Peter Paul Wines, Napa Valley Vintners and XOJet.

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