Spoleto is a vehicle for discoveries
CHARLESTON, S.C.— In all of Canada, and for that matter in all of the United States, there is nothing quite like the annual late May-early June culture binge known as Spoleto Festival USA.
First of all there is its setting, the city perennially topping polls of the continent’s favourite tourist destinations, a place where visitors can stand at the point where the Ashley River meets the Cooper River (to form the Atlantic Ocean, as locals like to say) and gaze across the harbour to the tiny island still housing Fort Sumpter, recipient of the opening canon shots of the Civil War.
Festival events take place throughout a historic district crowded with 18th- and early 19th-century houses proudly bearing plaques identifying their original owners and there are more than 150 of those events this year, not to mention an even larger number of fringe events collectively known as Piccolo Spoleto.
And in case the name sounds confusing, Spoleto is the town near Rome in which the composer Gian Carlo Menotti founded the festival before establishing an American counterpart of considerably larger dimensions. Menotti has long since departed his Charleston enterprise, not to mention life on Earth, but his vision of a comprehensive, innovative arts festival has survived him.
On one day last week, I attended an opera by Cimarosa, Il matrimonio segreto (The Secret Marriage), performed by Carlo Colla and Sons, an Italian marionette company; on another day, a play on the life of the painter Marc Chagall, Daniel Jamieson’s The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, performed by Cornwall’s Kneehigh; on yet another day, an hour and a quarter of virtually non-stop acrobatics by Gravity & Other Myths, an Australian physical theatre company.
An intermissionless hour and a quarter seems to be the festival’s preferred performance length and, not surprisingly so, in order to accommodate morning, afternoon and evening presentations and the time needed to stroll between venues and consume food. That is the length of time taken by my favourite festival events, the morning and afternoon Bank of America Chamber Music concerts at the Dock Street Theatre, whose origin dates back to Feb. 12, 1736.
Geoff Nuttall, first violinist of the resident St. Lawrence String Quartet — whose next performance for Music Toronto takes place Oct. 18 at the St. Lawrence Centre — has presided over these concerts for nine years now, with a pun-enhanced sense of humour and enthusiasm bordering on hyperbole.
(He introduced James Austin Smith as “the greatest oboist in the world” and Pedja Musijevic as “the greatest Mozart pianist alive.”)
Enthusiasm notwithstanding, he routinely packs the 800seat theatre with audiences accustomed to music-making of high quality, this year including the world premiere of Doug Balliett’s Gawain’s Journey, featuring the St. Lawrence and Jack String quartets.
I missed this year’s orchestral concerts, featuring a nationally recruited ensemble of young players, reportedly no fewer than 20 of them from Florida’s remarkable training orchestra, the New World Symphony, but I did manage to hear one of the concerts by the excellent Westminster Choir under Joe Miller held in the venerable Cathedral Church of St. Luke and St. Paul.
Charleston is a city of churches, which is why Piccolo Spoleto could accommodate my first live encounter with Chatham Baroque, a period instrument ensemble whose Dorian compact discs I used to review in the Star, in the historic setting of St. Philip’s Anglican Church, whose adjacent graveyard accommodates two signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Yes, history and the arts keep close company at this time of year, but Spoleto is also a vehi- cle for discoveries. Two examples? Dorrance Dance is an American company that uniquely incorporates electronic floor boards to enable the dancers to manipulate the sounds produced by their tap dancing.
And Pia de’ Tolomei, co-produced by the festival with Teatro di Pisa, Teatro del Giglio di Lucca and Teatro Goldoni di Livorno, is a virtually unknown 19th-century opera by Donizetti, which was probably receiving its North American premiere.
I had never before heard a bel canto opera fuller of beautiful melodies, pouring out one after another.
So what if the plot concerning a jealous husband and his innocent wife reeks of cliché? A discovery like this would be worth a visit to Charleston any time.