Spoleto Festival USA ends the 43rd season with ticket sales topping $3 million for the fourth consecutive year

More than 63,000 seats filled at events in 2019

Despite two weeks of extreme heat followed by a deluge of rain and thunderstorms, the 2019 season of Spoleto Festival USA once again proved why the 17-day Festival is “one of the best reasons for visiting Charleston” (The Toronto Star). Spoleto offered its 63,000 ticket holders four world premieres, three US premieres, and several new stagings and re-imaginings of classic work across all genres, achieving over $3.05 million in ticket sales. Positive reviews poured in from local, national, and international media outlets—as well as across the Festival’s social media and digital platforms from engaged audience members.

Spoleto’s 43rd season opened at 12:00pm in front of City Hall with a passionate keynote address from Congressman Joe Cunningham, who spoke to the arts’ ability to transcend boundaries and bring people together—which he said comes at a crucial time in our nation’s history. “Art has never been more necessary than it is right now,” he said. “Art elicits strong reactions…and forces you to reckon with [those reactions].”

Some of the season’s most fervent reactions followed the Festival’s new production of Richard Strauss’s Salome, which “has been given a risky and risqué production that raises as many questions as it answers” (Classical Voice North America). Directed by Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser, the pair placed the 1905 opera in a contemporary setting, and, continues Classical Voice North America, “made a persuasive case for a Salome that is cruder, more violent, and more depraved than previous productions. And, not coincidentally, more timely.” Adds The Post and Courier: “The timeliness of this production—which arrives in an historical moment of reflection and debate over the agency of, and assaults on, women here in the U.S. and around the world—is uncanny.”  Soprano Melanie Henley Heyn, who made her full-length opera debut in the role of Salome, was praised for her dramatic portrayal of the princess, singing “beautifully and expressively across her range” (WDAV).

The world premiere of Amos Gitai’s Letter to a Friend in Gaza elicited similar charged responses from theatergoers; its pointed subject matter—the Israeli-Palestinian conflict told through poetry, music, and video—“encapsulate[ed] how it feels to flee one’s home, to fight for your freedom at a border, or to look back, with a hint of shame, only to say that you were just following orders” (Charleston City Paper). The performance was the “start of a conversation, not the end,” and post-show talk-backs with the director were added after each performance. In a review titled “Gitai’s Elegiac and Abrasive Letter to a Friend in Gaza Strikes a Nerve at Spoleto,” Broadway World states that the piece “deserved more than five performances in Charleston.”

Company 1927 also brought a world premiere, and with its signature fusion of music, animation, and live performance that created a “striking” and “unique theatrical experience” (The Post and Courier), Roots “enchant[ed] on all levels” (Charleston City Paper). The Raw Material and Traverse Theatre co-production What Girls Are Made Of made its US premiere at Memminger Auditorium on June 4 – 8, a music-filled play juxtaposing writer/director Cora Bissett’s whirlwind teenage years as the lead singer of an indie-rock band with her life now as an adult, facing new obstacles and losses.

Theater played a key role in Spoleto’s 2019 season: six varied companies presented eight different works. London’s renowned Shakespeare’s Globe offered a rotation of three plays at Dock Street Theatre—Twelfth Night, The Comedy of Errors, and Pericles. The company of eight actors also presented Audience Choice events, during which the audience cheered for the play they most wanted to see. Overall, audiences voted for The Comedy of Errors five times, Twelfth Night three times, and once for Pericles, which a reviewer from DC Theatre Scene deemed “the most satisfying.” Rounding out the Festival’s theater offerings were The Fever, “a unique, absorbing, communal theater experience” (The Post and Courier), and Target Margin Theater’s Pay No Attention to the Girl, drawn from the stories found in One Thousand and One Nights. Company members of 1927 and 600 HIGHWAYMEN participated in discussions with Martha Teichner as part of the free Conversations With series.

The shimmering Caracalla Dance Theatre, a 50-year-old troupe based in Lebanon, also presented a work stemming from Scheherazade’s fanciful tales. Caracalla Dance Theatre’s One Thousand and One Nights made its “multicolored, mesmerizing” (Charleston City Paper) US premiere on June 7 at the Charleston Gaillard Center, and earned standing ovations from the nearly sold-out crowd. The all-male Compagnie Hervé Koubi’s What the Day Owes to the Night opened the Festival’s dance series, and also earned significant ovations. Writes The Post and Courier: “When the audience realized the piece had ended, patrons sprung to their feet. Astonishingly, not one person left the auditorium during the applause.” Opening May 28, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company presented Analogy Trilogy at Memminger Auditorium, a three-part work “propelled by narrative…punctuated time and again by arriving and departing, settlement and dislocation, sometimes by choice and sometimes tragically otherwise” (Charleston City Paper). Festivalgoers had the chance to see each of Jones’s three creations twice—and all three dance companies offered participatory master classes to members of the general public.

Australian physical theater company Circa presented a run of six sold-out performances of the mesmerizing What Will Have Been, a work Charleston City Paper describes as “an hour-plus of sheer astonishment.” This was the troupe’s second time at Spoleto Festival USA, following its first sold-out season in 2011. This year’s presentation of What Will Have Been, featuring three acrobats and an onstage violinist, was created and directed by Yaron Lifschitz, who “created a rapturous piece that beautifully bridges the gap between circus art and contemporary movement” (The Post and Courier).

The 33 concerts as part of the Bank of America Chamber Music series, held at Dock Street each day at 11:00am and 1:00pm, proved once again to be a Festival favorite. More than 12,000 ticket holders attended the daily performances led by violinist and Director of Chamber Music Geoff Nuttall. Celebrating his 10th year at the helm of the series, Nuttall included “surprise picks” on four of the 11 programs; selections included tenor Paul Groves singing Rachmaninoff’s “O, Cease Thy Singing, Maiden Fair”; Paul Holmes Morton playing a Kapsperger theorbo solo; a set of Marais tunes (dating back to the 17th century) performed by Morton and bassist Doug Balliett; and Balliett, cellist Joshua Roman, and Morton on banjo playing a set of four songs including “Shady Groves” and The Beatles’ “I Will.” Cellist Paul Wiancko served as the 2019 Bank of America Chamber Music composer in residence. Among several of his recent works, the world premiere of Faults, an oboe quintet for James Austin Smith and the St. Lawrence String Quartet, was heard on Program III. Overall, the series featured 22 artists performing works by 30 composers, ranging from the 17th to 21st centuries.

Two musical highlights of the 43rd season were Westminster Choir’s marvelous renditions of Joby Talbot’s contemporary vocal work Path of Miracles, punctuated by innovative staging by John La Bouchardière. The singers portrayed travelers along the ancient Camino de Santiago, a religious pilgrimage across Northern Spain, with continuous walking and stone carrying—all while singing Talbot’s complex score. The Toronto Star called the experience “a spiritual journey in sight and sound.” The Westminster Choir also sung twice in St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church, as well as in Bach’s monumental St. John Passion; all three performances were dedicated to Maestro Joseph Flummerfelt, Spoleto’s longtime choral director who died in March 2019. Festival Director of Choral Activities Joe Miller spoke to Flummerfelt’s influence and lasting impact before the St. Matthew’s concerts and during a discussion with Martha Teichner as part of the Conversations With series.

Members of the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra proved to be among the busiest artists during Spoleto Festival USA, accompanying the opera Salome—“one of the Orchestra’s finest hours” (Classical Voice North America)—and St. John Passion, as well as performing three showcase concerts and in several chamber works during the contemporary Music in Time series (deemed by Classical Voice North America as “always some of the [Festival’s] most interesting experiences.”). On May 26, Orchestra members gave Britta Byström’s Rebellion in Greenery its US premiere: “a more melodious, slightly less raucous Rite of Spring, with a distinct Nordic flair and a brisk, frisky energy” (Classical Voice). Following the Orchestra’s most noteworthy concert, a program of Prokofiev and Shostakovich expertly conducted by Evan Rogister, the audience’s “enthusiasm was palpable” as they cheered for musicians who “justly took center stage as champions” (The Post and Courier).

Two bluegrass-inflected bands performed at the College of Charleston Cistern Yard as part of the First Citizens Bank Front Row series. The Punch Brothers opened the series on May 26 to a sold-out audience and rave reviews, including this excerpt from Charleston City Paper: “The Punch Brothers are the perfect Spoleto band, and on Sunday, they orchestrated a return Cistern performance that will be talked about for another 10 years.” I’m With Her, the all-female folk trio comprised of Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan, also pleased the Cistern Yard crowd on May 31, offering “polished playing” that “showcased even more the band’s exquisite harmonies” (The Post and Courier).

The College of Charleston Cistern Yard hosted four performances within the Wells Fargo Jazz series: two nights with Esperanza Spalding, and concerts from Carla Bley and an accomplished quintet—drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, pianist Craig Taborn, bassist Robert Hurst, and tap dancer Maurice Chestnut—that celebrated the life of pianist Geri Allen. For the quintet’s concert informally dubbed “Feed the Fire,” the legacy of Allen and her influence on the artists “reverberated throughout a set of her original compositions” (The Post and Courier). Other Wells Fargo Jazz performances included the Dafnis Prieto Big Band at the Charleston Gaillard Center, and two six-concert residencies at the Simons Center Recital Hall featuring duo Mark Turner and Ethan Iverson as well as Cuban pianist David Virelles. Outside of their evening performances, David Virelles and Terri Lyne Carrington led open-to-the-public workshops at the Charleston Jazz Academy in North Charleston as part of the Festival’s growing Spoleto ETC outreach and education program. (Other Spoleto ETC endeavors within the Festival’s jazz programming included two Jazz Talks with Carrington and Virelles, hosted by writer Larry Blumenfeld.)

Culminating the 43rd season on June 9 was the Festival’s signature Wells Fargo Festival Finale, held this year at Riverfront Park in North Charleston. A crowd of people were waiting for the gates to open at 5:00pm, and more than 2,200 picnickers packed in before local band The Artisanals took the stage at 6:00pm. While a torrential rain and thunderstorm interrupted a set from Charleston hip-hop artist and activist Benny Starr, the Festival continued the event when it was safe to do so, and headliner Curtis Harding brought Spoleto to a celebratory close. A fireworks display ended the evening, set ablaze to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” (a fitting song, especially as the Festival’s opera Salome began with Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust”). And while Charleston City Paper has, in recent years, been among the Festival’s most biting Wells Fargo Finale critics, the outlet lauded this season’s event: “We looked around and smiled, high fived, and knew that after a huge moment of doubt…the Spoleto folks had pulled it off. … From an audience perspective, the Spoleto Finale is back atop the A-list.”

The 44th season of Spoleto Festival USA will take place May 22 to June 7, in Charleston, South Carolina. A recent announcement of the Festival-commissioned world premiere opera by Rhiannon Giddens can be found here. Details for the full 2020 season will be revealed in January.

Spoleto Festival USA

Founded in 1977, Spoleto Festival USA is an annual 17-day performing arts festival in Charleston, SC, that presents leading artists in classical and popular music, opera, jazz, dance, and theater. The 2020 season takes place May 22 to June 7 in various locations on the downtown peninsula. Spoleto Festival USA is a 501 (c)(3) charitable organization.