The Chateauville Foundation for Music Education
Lorin and Dietlinde Maazel's Nonprofit Charity
Jul 25, 2009
The Chateauville Foundation’s Origins and Mission
Castleton Farms, located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, consists of 550 acres, including the Maazel residence, a Theatre House, and various public and private residences and community meeting places.
The main house, which was built in 1857, was open to visitors in July, 2009. According to a tour guide, the mansion endured the dangers of the Civil War battered but intact. On a large, well-situated property that was overrun by both Union and Confederate troops, it changed hands over 80 times and served a number of functions for both sides.
Lorin Maazel, recently retired from the New York Philharmonic as its music director, bought the property in the late 1980s as a rural retreat from the rigors of international conducting. Its brick farmhouse evolved into the Maazel family home as well as ground zero for the Chateauville Foundation.
According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, the purpose of this foundation is to "promote musical arts and support children's charities, including general and music education programs." The Foundation nurtures young artists, fosters collaborative artistic enterprise, and creates opportunities within the community for shared cultural experience by promoting the musical arts.
At the beginning, it provided primary school education at the cooperative Hearthstone School, which offered a holistic curriculum in which the arts played a central role to the three Maazel children as well as neighborhood children. The Hearthstone School, which relocated in 2000, is no longer affiliated with the Châteauville Foundation.
The principles that inspired its creation, however, continue to animate the Foundation’s activities. Its main summer event, the annual Castleton Festival, is the only festival in the United States devoted to chamber opera. During its first summer, in 2009, Maazel taught master classes in conducting; visitors could tour the Maazels’ 550-acre Castleton Farm; and a traditional country dance was featured on the Fourth of July.
How the Castleton Festival Began
Castleton’s inaugural concert was held on June 21, 1997, three months ahead of schedule. It was preceded by an open house and preview concert for the entire community, including a large number of local artisans who had worked on the project. (Mstislav Rostropovich, the evening’s special guest, had requested an early opening, resulting in a frantic but successful push to complete the building in time.) The event was a benefit for the Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich Foundation, which provides a range of health care services to under-served children in Russia and the former Soviet states.
At the gala concert, Maestro Maazel played his Stradivarius violin in a trio with cellist “Slava” Rostropovich and pianist Yefim Bronfman. Their program included music by Bach, Scarlatti, Chopin, and Kreisler, culminating in the magnificent Tchaikovsky Piano Trio, Op. 50.
The Chateauville Foundation: A Brief History
In 1998, the Foundation hosted a weekend of concerts with Itzhak Perlman as the special guest. Young musicians from the Perlman Music School, which was the beneficiary of that year’s gala fundraiser, also attended. In 1999, tenor José Carreras came to the Theatre House under the patronage of Queen Sofia of Spain for a program of opera and zarzuela. Maestro Maazel and the “Castleton Philharmonic” performed for the benefit of the Carreras Leukemia Foundation.
Other guest artists during the Foundation’s first ten years included Kitty Carlyle Hart, the Lokvany Dance Group from India, actor Ted Griethuysen, who did a dramatic reading of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and cellist Han-Na Chang. After a brief hiatus in 2001, the Foundation’s activities were re-launched and expanded in the autumn of 2002, coinciding with Maestro Maazel’s assumption of the Music Directorship of the New York Philharmonic.
For More Information
Chateauville's Form 990, an annual return it must file with the IRS, provides information on its mission, programs, and finances.The most recent Form 990 for Chateauville Foundation, which covers 2007, can be viewed on this Foundation Center web page.
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