The Utah Festival Opera Company of Logan filed suit in 3rd District Court this week against the University of Utah, contending the school unlawfully took possession of an archive of rare music memorabilia.
The recordings, instruments, books and other items are valued at approximately $3 million. The suit filed Monday says they were donated to the opera company in early 1997.
But university officials say they discussed the donation with representatives of the Mariska Aldrich Memorial Foundation in California in the early 1990s and were given the collection in August of 1998.
"The university, as you can imagine, was very pleased to be chosen by the foundation as the home of the archive" and formally accepted the gift that summer, according to Fred Esplin, vice president for university relations.
"We understand the Utah Festival Opera Company's disappointment that the university was chosen, and they were not . . . but to best of our knowledge, no gift was made until the foundation donated the collection to the university in August of 1998."
The opera company says the decision to donate the archive to them was made by executive officers Ric Anderson and Henry Holt in early 1997. Officials say parts of the archive were even delivered to Logan.
But Holt died in late 1997 and Anderson died in 1998. The suit charges that former members of the archive's governing board then met to revoke the gift to the opera company and transfer the rest of the material to the University of Utah instead.
"We have hesitated in bringing this action," said Barbara Fjeldsted, chair of the Opera Company's board of trustees in a press release announcing the suit. "On two separate occasions, Utah Festival Opera has expended great energy and resources in attempt to come to an equitable agreement with the University of Utah . . . Now, we intend to pursue every available legal avenue to recover and protect our rightful property."
Esplin said the university is "disappointed that (the company) has resorted to litigation, even though we had just recently offered to go to Logan to meet with them . . . to work this out."
He says the collection has a lot of scholarly interest and is being housed in one of the rooms in the newly renovated David Gardner Hall.
"It's a nice facility for (the collection), and the university has committed facilities, staff and funding to properly care for it," Esplin said.
But Michael Ballam, the Utah Festival Opera Company's general director,says the archive material is "both fragile and rare" and should not be on public display.
"Handling and foot traffic would quickly destroy it," he said. "Our plan has always been to digitize the recordings through Utah State University and place them on the World Wide Web, thus making them available to everyone while preserving the originals."
The opera company is suing for ownership of the archive and for damages it has incurred as a "result of the conversion of property."
You can reach Maria Titze by e-mail at mtitze@desnews.com