Sick and tired of ear-shattering motorsports and multi-millionaire spoilsports? Head south to the picturesque port city of Charleston and revel in one of the most glorious arts events on the planet, Spoleto Festival USA.
Founded in 1977 by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Gian Carlo Menotti as the New World offshoot of his Festival dei Due Mondi (Festival of Two Worlds) in Spoleto, Italy, the younger festival heads into its second quarter century with more programming — and prestige — than its 45-year-old progenitor. Over the 17 days of Spoleto USA, May 24 through June 9, there are over 125 performing arts tickets up for grabs.
Toss in a couple of dozen lectures and heritage events, sprinkle with a citywide installation of large-scale works by leading international visual artists newly commissioned for 2002, and you still only have the tip of a huge cultural iceberg. At the same time that the big international names and glamour events are shuttling in and out of Big Spoleto’s prime venues, Piccolo Spoleto will be staging an astonishing 700 events focusing primarily on artists of the Southeast.
No, you can’t see everything. But during the 17 days of Spoleto revels, you can sample a smorgasbord of theater, opera, jazz, choral, and classical music from 10 in the morning till 11 at night. My wife and I would probably do just that if the restaurants, the historical sites, the lush parks, and the shopping weren’t all so varied and enticing. While it’s impossible to fully experience the magnitude of Spoleto, you can gradually catch up with the wonders of Charleston: its bustle, its sophistication, and its rich heritage.
Here’s a rundown of the events I’m most looking forward to at Spoleto Festival USA — and the ones I most regret missing.
Theatre
I’m much more optimistic about this year’s headline theater event, Brian Friel’s The Bear/Afterplay doublebill (5/24-6/9), than when it was first announced. The opening half of the program is Friel’s new translation of an oft-anthologized one-act farce by Chekhov (sometimes known as The Brute). Then Friel writes his own sequel, using two of Chekhov’s characters.
But the reprised characters aren’t from the lightweight Bear. They’re drawn from more substantial works by the Russian master — Andrei Prozorov from The Three Sisters and Sonya Serebriakova from Uncle Vanya. Just as significant, we get to see John Hurt onstage at cozy Dock Street Theatre as Andrei. Hurt’s fabled TV and screen roles date back to his maniacal Caligula in the I, Claudius miniseries and include signature performances in Alien, Crime and Punishment, 1984, and Oscar-nominated gems in Elephant Man and Midnight Express.
I’d be more excited about seeing Obon: Tales of Rain and Moonlight (5/30-6/9) if we were able to squeeze Ping Chong’s latest exploit in puppetry into our tight schedule. In 1998, Chong dazzled us with Kwaidan, based on three of Lafcadio Hearn’s transcriptions of Japanese ghost tales. Now we get a second helping derived from Hearn plus fresh ghostly take-outs from the classic Ugetsu Monogatari collection. Exquisitely creepy fun for the whole family.
Opera/Music Theatre
I’m beginning to summon fresh enthusiasm for this year’s Spoleto theater lineup, but the opera fare rocks — with two giants of the genre rarely seen onstage at the festival. They’re going to do Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman (5/24, 27, 31, 6/7) at big Gaillard Auditorium, staged by Chen Shi-Zheng, starring Mark Delavan and Jeanne-Michele Charbonnet. It’s historic whenever anybody stages Wagner here in the Carolinas, but conductor Emmanuel Villaume believes that this will be the first time Wagner’s original 1841 version (rather than the more familiar 1896 Felix Weingarten revision) will be performed anywhere in the United States. Remembering Shi-Zheng’s audacious version of Dido and Aeneas at Dock Street last year, I’m not expecting anything about this landmark production to be humdrum.
George Cleve is conducting Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte (5/25-6/8) at intimate Dock Street Theatre, which ought to be a perfect marriage of venue and material for the singers and stage director Pierre Constant. Trusted siblings Fiordiligi and Dorabella will be sung by Angela Fout and Jossie Perez while Jesus Garcia and Chris Schaldenbrand portray their overconfident fiancés.
I’m even more optimistic about the pair of American premieres from Broomhill Opera, Yiimimangaliso: The Mysteries and The South African Carmen (5/24-6/2). Fresh from a successful run in London, The Mysteries is a contemporary South African reinterpretation of the medieval Mystery Plays first performed in Chester, England, in the 13th century. Equally acclaimed, Carmen abridges the famed Bizet opera, singing it in English, with minimal dialogue spoken in the singers’ native Xhosa or Afrikaans language.
Another tip-off on Broomhill. They’re on the bill at the Italian Spoleto later this spring. Since the acrimonious departure of Menotti in the mid ’90s, the sibling festivals rarely agree on anything anymore.
Chamber/Orchestral Music
Longtime festival faves the St. Lawrence String Quartet return to anchor the daily Chamber Music Series (5/24-6/9), as do many of the other usual suspects. Argentina native Osvaldo Golijov, this year’s composer-in-residence, has collaborated before with the St. Lawrence group. His newest work, featuring the quartet, clarinetist Todd Palmer, and soprano Courtenay Budd, will be unveiled during the second weekend of Spoleto. Charles Wadsworth emcees in his inimitable style. The shambling keyboardist is an enduring Charleston cult hero.
There are other music series to listen to as well, all of them with tie-ins to the festival’s mainstage composers. The ultramodern Music in Time series, hosted by the resolutely low-key John Kennedy, peaks with “A celebration of the music of Steve Reich” (6/1). All you mod music hipsters will be aching to join me at live performances of Reich’s Nagoya Mountains, Vermont Counterpoint, Triple Quartet, and the “remarkable” City Life. If all goes well, my hearing and my marriage will survive those bonbons.
I’m also trapped, I mean booked to see the American premiere of the Reich/Beryl Korot Three Tales (5/31-6/2). Hey, I saw the first segment of this musical/documentary trilogy, “Hindenberg,” in 1998. Gotta see how this turkey ends. Join us if you have $35 — and 75 minutes — to toss away.
Another reason for us to be at Reich’s premiere is the unveiling of a new Spoleto venue. An abandoned downtown theater, Meminger Auditorium, promises to provide the perfect setting for Reich’s ruminations on the ruination of the 20th Century.
Meminger has also been chosen for the Wagner and Beyond concert on June 3: overtures to Rienzi and Tannhouser; the “Good Friday Spell” from Parsifal; “Scene au tombeau” from Berlioz’ Romeo et Juliette; the overture from Lortzing’s Die Wildschutz; and Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration. This high point in the Spoleto Festival Orchestra series is conceived as an exploration of the music that led to Dutchman — and the opera’s musical legacy.
The Intermezzi series of 5 o’clock concerts doesn’t get started until the second weekend this year. I only get to see one of the four, Angela Fout and Don Frazure singing Debussy, Duparc, Strauss, and Schubert (6/2). There’s another lode of Wagner on June 7 when Andrew von Oeyen plays a passel of Liszt’s piano transcriptions, but I expect we’ll be seeing enough of the piano’s new glamour boy at the Chamber Music Series. Really bummed about missing the Thursday, June 6, concert. Finzi’s Romance for String Orchestra, Tippett’s Concerto for Double String Orchestra, four folksong settings by Britten, and two Ives faves, Set #3 and Three Songs. All Intermezzi are at beautiful Grace Episcopal Church, where you’re advised to come early for the best seats.
The Westminster Choir (5/30, 6/5, 8) sent down from heaven above, will elude me for all three of their concerts this year. I’m particularly chagrined to miss their June 5 hookup with the Festival Orchestra on Honegger’s King David and Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms.
Dance
While you’d hardly consider the dance lineup as the backbone of Spoleto USA, it’s consistently the strongest component. If your troupe is featured at Big Gaillard during Spoleto, you’re simply one of the best on Earth. And if you’re featured at the Garden Theatre, you’ve made it to the cutting edge.
Dance Theatre of Harlem should be stoked as they arrive at Big G this weekend (5/25-26). Just one more stateside gig in Chicago and they’ll be heading for their summer European tour of Italy and Austria. Repertoire for the 32-year-old company ranges from Petipa and Balanchine classics up to contemporaries like Dwight Rhoden and company founder Arthur Mitchell. Music they’ll dance to could range from Bach to Aretha.
It isn’t every company that gets a crack at presenting the pioneering works of Nacho Duarte and Twyla Tharp, so Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (6/6, 8) looks like the best of what I’ll be missing.
Mostly hailing from North Africa, Compagnie Kafig (5/25-27) will affirm that hip-hop — and world class head spinning, courtesy of noted champion KB — can be part of the mix at the Footprints in the Garden series. I’m also booked for a second coming of Chen Shi-Zheng in this series as the director offers Ghost Lovers (5/30-6/2), a colorful stylized take on The Water Margin, a classic novel dating back to the Ming Dynasty. Rounding out the series, Salia ni Seydou (6/6-8) creates intense theatrical pieces by fusing fluid gestures with African violin and percussion.
Jazz
Finally, I’m jazzed about the jazz. Since Menotti’s departure, this element of the festival has blossomed while remaining quite anemic at the Italian Spoleto. Dianne Reeves is the big woof for 2002, partly because of her undeniable stature and partly because she boycotted Spoleto during the heyday of the Confederate Flag controversy. Those who know say her live appearances are a quantum leap above most of her CDs — none of which are exactly dog food. I’ll have to pass on her appearance at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center on June 8.
Instead, I’ll be able to catch both of the moonlight concerts underneath the live oaks and the magnolias at The Cistern. Toots Thielemans (5/26) has been dear to me ever since I got past his Midnight Cowboy pop drivel. This time around, the Belgian harmonica master brings a trio that includes pianist Kenny Werner and guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves. That may mean that Toots is leaving his original instrument, the guitar, at home. But don’t bet on it.
I’m eager to see vocalist Tierney Sutton (5/25), too. I’m willing to give a chance to any singer who does a tribute album to Bill Evans, and I’m determined not to let her good looks count against her.
Pianist Hank Jones (5/31-6/1) has been a fave of mine ever since I bought my first jazz album (Cannonball Adderley’s Somethin’ Else) and heard his floating, spacey solo near the end of “Autumn Leaves” — upstaging none other than Miles Davis. He brings a trio that includes the Czechoslovakian bass whiz George Mraz. The crown jewel in a royal jazz family, Jones will do two sets on two consecutive nights, turning the Recital Hall at Albert Simons Center into a Spoleto jazz venue for the first time. See him twice. We just might. *
This article appears in May 22-28, 2002.
