Spoleto story takes center stage at DI Speakers Series

Prepare to be dazzled. A visual and auditory feast is coming your way in the form of the 2016 Spoleto Festival USA. The 17-day cultural spectacle may be six months away, but already hype is growing that this will be the event’s grandest ever in the Holy City.

That prediction was further authenticated by the festival’s longtime general director Nigel Redden, who served as the 12th guest speaker in the popular Daniel Island Speaker Series, held at the Daniel Island Club on November 18. Redden offered a few sneak peaks into some of the planned shows for the upcoming festival, among them a much anticipated production of the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess, which will feature the 22-member Johnson C. Smith University Concert Choir and set designs by acclaimed artist and Gullah native Jonathan Green. The opera, dubbed “a landmark production,” will help inaugurate the renovated Gaillard Center as a new venue for Spoleto USA. Redden is confident audience members will be collectively wowed when the curtain goes up.

“Anyone can see Charleston around them,” he told the crowd. “So how do you make it special? How do you make it different from a Porgy and Bess that might be done in Chicago, or New York, or San Francisco? And the solution is Jonathan Green. Jonathan is a very sophisticated artist…As the opera begins to explore the people of Catfish Row, I hope that what you will see is a transformation. Certainly there will be a transformation on the set…I think that it will be a very moving production.”

“With Porgy and Bess, Charlestonian DuBose Heyward painted a distinctive and enduring portrait of Gullah life as lived by the residents of his fictional Catfish Row,” stated Green, in a press release about the performance. “As someone who shares this Gullah heritage, telling this story with an authentic Gullah voice is an exciting opportunity for me and one that I will use to reveal some of the lesser-known African traditions that are an integral part of Charleston history.”

Another special feature of the production has yet to announced publicly, but will offer a unique, historic family tie to the performance. Redden is hopeful the festival can add a second showing of Porgy and Bess in Marion Square. They are working to secure funding for that now, he said.

“It would be great if we can,” he added. “Because I do think it would be a popular event.”

A Tale of Two Cities

Redden also took time to showcase some of the history behind Spoleto USA. The event got its start in Spoleto, Italy, under the direction of Pulitzer Prize winning composer Gian Carlo Menotti. “The Festival of Two Worlds” began in 1958 as an event spotlighting operatic performers, dancers, musicians, and visual artists in both Europe and America.

“Gian Carlo very much desired a festival that young American artists would have an opportunity to perform for European audiences,” said Redden, who grew up in Italy and later obtained an art history degree from Yale University. “He also wanted to show Europeans what was going on in America…The festival was an opportunity for Italians to have a window on the rest of the world.”

The event helped transform the hillside city of Spoleto, which had a population of about 30,000 people, into an arts-infused cultural mecca.

“When Gian Carlo started the festival in Italy, he had wanted it to be in a town where a festival could make a difference, not only artistically, not only aesthetically, but also financially. And certainly the festival in Spoleto has done that.”

In 1975, Spoleto administrators began looking in America for a location to expand the festival, with the goal of creating an equally impactful event that would mirror its purpose in Italy. Initially, they started exploring sites along the Hudson River in New York, largely due to its close proximity to the burgeoning arts scene in New York City. But after receiving a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, they began to shift their search to the South. After studying Winston-Salem, North Carolina, they set their sights on Charleston.

“Charleston had everything that Spoleto had,” said Redden, who has been associated with the Charleston festival for more than 30 years. “It’s a city with a sense of itself. A city with a sense of beauty. A city with an extraordinary history, and even more importantly, a city with some theaters…They decided on Charleston and wanted to keep the same formula, the same idea of having dance, music, theatre, opera, all of the performing arts and visual arts, in the compact of 17 days.”

Spoleto Festival USA officially debuted in Charleston in 1977. The Dock Street Theatre had just completed a renovation the year before, so it served as an idea place to showcase events.

“The first opera to be performed in America was performed in Charleston in the original Dock Street Theatre,” added Redden. “There was a ballet company here in the 18th century, there was a French language theatre company and an English language theatre company in the 18th century. The oldest musical organization in the country is in Charleston.”

Spoleto administrators also saw an opportunity for larger audiences in the new American location. In Italy the equivalent of the Dock Street Theatre seats 200 people, versus the 463 offered here. The equivalent theatre to the newly finished Gaillard Auditorium in Italy seats 900. The Gaillard now seats 1600 to 1800.

“What we needed to do was have a program rich and varied enough to attract an audience of more people from Charleston, but also from far away,” said Redden. “The festival financially costs more than is reasonable to expect for a city this size…So we raise money all over the country, particularly on the east coast.”

The success of the festival in Charleston has been tremendous, with many performances selling out each year. Their annual chamber music performances, for example, are hugely popular.

“I think we have a larger chamber music audience per capita than any other city in America during our 17 days,” said Redden. “We do 33 concerts, and 11 different programs, all in the Dock Street,” said Redden. “So we have an audience of almost 1500 for each of those programs. It’s extraordinary who comes (to perform).”

One young performer who took part in the festival’s early days, Yo-Yo Ma, is now a highly acclaimed musician who showcased his talents at the new Gaillard’s inaugural performance on October 18.

The other thing Spoleto does well, Redden added, is its offering of unique and different performances that festival goers are not likely to experience here at other times of the year.

“The festival always every year walks a tight rope between doing things that are going to be popular and things that are going to attract someone from Japan (and other places),” he said. “Every year we try to be different. We try to do something a little better, and offer a little more, from the year before.”

Tickets for Spoleto Festival USA 2016 go on sale January 3 with a plethora of exciting new offerings and refurbished venues. The event will be held from May 27 through June 12.

“I think it will be the best that we’ve ever done,” added Redden. “So I do hope you’ll come!”

For additional information, visit www.spoletousa.org. The next event in the Daniel Island Speaker Series will be held on February 3, when the program welcomes retired U.S. Air Force Four Star General Al Hansen as the guest speaker.