Yup. If you didn’t make it down to Charleston over the weekend, you were absent for the kickoff to Spoleto Festival USA. Among the roll call of world-class artists, productions and concerts you’ve already missed are the Tierney Sutton Band, Hiroaki Umeda, Florin Niculescu, one Intermezzo orchestral concert, two Music in Time contemporary concerts, three Bank of America chamber music concerts, and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre celebrating their 50th anniversary.
Even if you don’t have a doctor’s note to excuse your absence — and even if you’re hopelessly addicted to SpeedStreet, the Coca-Cola 600, and all the NOISE that goes along with them — you can make amends. For Spoleto, the greatest performing arts festival in the New World, lingers on through two more weekends. There are two more Intermezzi, two more Music in Times, eight more BofA chambers, and a raft of other jazz artists, theater productions, orchestral and choral concerts, and dance troupes yet to parade into the Port City — a glorious artwork in its own right.
Spoleto’s major opera production, as well as its prime theater import, will continue their runs into the final weekend, June 6-7. And if you really, really wanted to catch Alvin Ailey during their golden jubilee, didn’t you snap up tickets when they were here in February 2008?
Here are the best of the goodies that are still headed toward Spoleto — or waiting on you to catch up:
Theater
Don John (through June 7) — Kneehigh Theatre, the company that jolted Spoleto 2006 with Tristan & Yseult, takes aim at a different opera classic, Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The legendary lover relocates to 1970s England, where he is re-examined from the perspective of his discarded conquests.
Good Cop Bad Cop (June 3-7) — Video and live performance intermingle as the Dutch troupe Kassys skewers media sensationalism and the new millennium’s reality TV culture.
Opera
Louise (through June 6) — Here’s the realism of La Boheme with vive la difference. Depicting the allure of Bohemian life in Paris, Louise has been insanely popular in France but rarely performed in the United States. Premiered almost exactly four years after the Puccini masterwork, the musical bouquet of Gustave Charpentier’s magnum opus is closer to the impressionism of Debussy.
Addicted to Bad Ideas (May 27-31) — Described as a “cabaret punk-rock operetta,” a description that reportedly leaves out a truckload of other musical influences, Addicted is subtitled “Peter Lorre’s 20th Century,” only adding to the zany eclecticism of it all. Music and libretto by the World/Inferno Friendship Society.
Classical
Das Lied von der Erde (May 28) — Nobody in Charlotte can complain about our Symphony forcing us to hear too much Mahler. All the more reason to seek out one of Gustave’s most accessible confections, his “song symphony” based on ancient Chinese poems. Conducted by Emmanuel Villaume with mezzo Sasha Cooke, tenor Russell Thomas, and the superb Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra.
Mozart/Poulenc (June 4) — Anything performed by the Westminster Choir is a soft caress of heaven on earth, and if you can’t be in Charleston on the evening of June 4, do peep in on their smaller-scale afternoon concerts on May 29 and June 2. If you can be at Gaillard Auditorium on June 4, the combination of Mozart’s Requiem and Francis Poulenc’s Gloria is unmissable. Conducted by choral guru Joseph Flummerfelt, the Spoleto Orchestra plus the Charleston Symphony Orchestra Chorus add to the Westminster’s musical muscle.
Dance
Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet (May 29-30) — The Manhattan-based outfit begins a Carolina invasion that continues in June at the American Dance Festival in Durham. At Spoleto, they will offer “Sunday, Again” by Norwegian choreographer Jo Stromgren and excerpts from Israeli sensation Ohad Naharin’s Decadence.
Jazz
Rene Marie (June 5) — This is the big ticket in the jazz lineup, booked for cavernous Gaillard. No wonder: Marie’s recording of “Suzanne,” coupled brilliantly with some vocalese laid upon Ravel’s Bolero, may have eclipsed Roberta Flack’s.
Of course, there is one way to catch up with what you’ve already missed at Spoleto. Read my online reviews next week.
This article appears in May 26 – Jun 2, 2009.
