Funding Row Threatens to Shut Down Arts Festival in Italy

The future of one of Europe's most renowned arts festivals is in doubt just three weeks before it is due to open.

A spokeswoman for the Italian culture ministry told the Guardian last night that talks on funding the Festival of the Two Worlds in Spoleto were at a standstill. The spokeswoman said: "There are no negotiations in progress. But we are ready to lend a hand to [the parties involved] to relaunch the festival."

The composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who died in February, built the festival into a leading annual event in the performing arts. But he and his adopted, US-born son Francis repeatedly locked horns with the local authorities of the medieval hill town, and relations between the two sides appear to have deteriorated further since his death.

The younger Mr Menotti appeared to snub the town by announcing that his father's funeral was to be held, at his own request, in Monte Carlo. On Monday, representatives of the town council were conspicuously absent from a press conference to announce the program for this year's 50th festival, which is due to begin on June 29.

A statement from the council said this was "exclusively due to the fact that, as on other occasions, they were not invited". The council said it continued to support the festival and that it was making "exceptional efforts" to ensure Spoleto's Teatro Nuovo would be restored in time for a performance on the opening night of Menotti's opera Maria Golovin.

But the daily Corriere della Sera yesterday reported that public funding for 70% of the estimated €5.5m (£3.7m) budget had yet to be agreed. The paper said Francis Menotti was being asked to accept an agreement whereby he was granted artistic control of the festival, "dependent on results".

The Spoleto authorities appear to believe Mr Menotti has no option but to give in. The mayor, Massimo Brunini, told the paper the composer's son could get nowhere by himself. There was no reply yesterday from the festival press office.

Gian Carlo Menotti wrote 22 operas, including the Christmas favorite Amahl and the Night Visitors. His adopted son said this year's event would be a tribute to its founder, but would also include retrospectives of the work of the film directors Terry Gilliam and Paul Mazursky and a staging of the Handel opera Ariodante.