Festivals: An Appetite-Whetting Thing

"What Kansas City needs culturally," declared Mrs. Cynthia ("Cindy") Kemper, the energetic president of the city's Performing Arts Foundation, "is a kick in the pants." Trouble was, Cindy, 36, kicked too hard. To bankroll the foundation's initial production of Handel's Julius Caesar last year, Kemper & Co. put the muscle on some 50 well-heeled friends to raise $140,000. The opera was a widely acclaimed success, but local cultural groups resented Cindy's steamrolling fund-raising tactics, and especially the insinuation that no other cultural enterprise in the city measured up to the foundation's...