Charleston’s Spoleto Festival USA has announced its 2024 season, which will open on May 24 and run until June 9. Always the biggest concentration of cutting-edge performing arts in the Southeast, Spoleto has become a regular destination for Atlantans in the know. There’s certainly nothing quite like it within easy driving distance.
This year’s Spoleto calendar is notably less crowded than in previous years. The Festival’s finances have been impacted by Covid-19 and by considerable turnover in key leadership positions. That said, there is always enough at Spoleto to fill up your schedule for a weekend or longer. Altogether, more than 100 performances are spread over 17 days.
Opera has long occupied the center stage at Spoleto, founded by opera composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Until the past few years, each season almost always featured three operas, one of them a large-scale production at the Gaillard Center, the festival’s main stage. This time around, there’s just one, and it’s a chamber work. Ruinous Gods, composed by Layale Chaker with a libretto by Lisa Schlesinger, looks at the effect of displacement on refugees. The score “weaves Arabic maqam and Western classical traditions with diverse Middle Eastern influences, jazz and improvisation.”
Spoleto’s popular chamber music series always comes with a talkative “host,” and this season will welcome cellist and composer Paul Wiancko in this role, with 33 performances at the historic Dock Street Theatre. This year the series will range from the 12th century composer Hildegard van Bingen to modern composers, including the premiere of a string quartet from Spoleto’s new composer-in-residence Reena Esmail. As always, the musician roster includes many of the biggest names in classical music.
Jazz is always on the menu for Spoleto, and this season Chaker and her ensemble Sarafand will present two different programs blending jazz with Middle Eastern influences (May 27 and May 28). Drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and vocalist Dianne Reeves will unite for a performance on May 26 featuring works by female jazz composers from Carrington’s New Standards. The Charles Lloyd Sky Quartet will be featured, as will a special ensemble of South Carolina Gullah musicians.
Other classical music programs include two concerts featuring the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, led by Music Director Timothy Myers. The June 1 program will include Mahler’s “Symphony No. 5,” and the program for June 5 includes Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 3,” along with Shostakovich’s “Piano Concerto No. 1,” with Inon Barnatan as soloist.
A couple of years ago, the Festival created the Spoleto Festival USA Chorus to replace the beloved Westminster Chorus, which for decades had traveled from Princeton each summer to provide the chorus and supernumeraries for opera performances, as well as concerts of its own. This ensemble will present two concerts this summer, on June 6 and June 7, featuring music by Esmail, as well as Russian masterworks and Ugis Praulin’s epic Laudibus in sanctis. The chorus will join the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra for a performance of Haydn’s The Creation on June 3.
Theater works this season include two world premieres: The Song of Rome by Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson (May 25 to June 2); and Dark Noon, an outsider’s perspective on American history performed by seven South African actors in a fictional film production (May 31 to June 2).
Family-friendly theater includes Hans Christian Andersen’s timeless tale, The Ugly Duckling. featuring handmade electroluminescent costumes and poignant choreography, set to music ranging from classical to pop. The production of Lightwire Theater is scheduled for June 1 and June 2.
The LA Dance Project will bring a production of Romeo and Juliet, choreographed by Benjamin Millepied and combining cinema, dance and theater May 25 and May 26.
Finally, music, song, dance and drama will collide at Spoleto in two separate performances during the Festival. Winner of the ninth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Sasha Velour will present The Big Reveal Live Show!, an immersive experience composed of classic drag, intimate storytelling, live art and video on June 6.
Plus, Tony Award-winner John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) and cabaret star Amber Martin will present Cassette Roulette, an interactive evening of songs, stories and characters, all chosen by the hand of fate and the audience-spun roulette wheel on May 25 and May 26.
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James L. Paulk is a longtime classical music writer for such publications as ArtsATL, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Musical America. He is also a former state senator.
