Word: spoleto
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...happened to the festival, which is currently in the midst of its 1995 edition. Under its formidable new general manager, Milton Rhodes, a native South Carolinian and former president of the American Council for the Arts, and with enthusiastic support from Charleston's feisty mayor, Joseph P. Riley Jr., Spoleto has weathered the artistic equivalent of Hurricane Hugo (which battered the city in 1989), reduced its debt by half a million dollars, and boosted its schedule to a robust 17 days, 51 programs and 141 performances-from the previous 12 days, 45 programs and 110 performances...
...Saint of Bleecker Street and The Medium, than for comedy or farce. In later years, however, the aging composer more than made up for it. The setting was the antebellum-in-aspic city of Charleston, South Carolina, where in 1977 Menotti founded an American counterpart to his annual Spoleto Festival in Italy. Two years ago, Menotti resigned in a huff after a petulant, embarrassing two-year power struggle with the festival's board and management. First the board insisted on including an avant-garde art exhibit Menotti opposed, then it rejected Menotti's chosen successor, his adopted son Francis. When...
...show derived from three novels by Samuel Beckett) to the mediocre (Hans Werner Henze's tired exercise in late-'50s avant-gardism, Der Prinz von Homburg) to the risible (the washed-up soprano Renata Scotto singing the role of the Marschallin in Richard Strauss's opera Der Rosenkavalier). Still, Spoleto seems on course to become one of the nation's most important and enjoyable arts events...
...devoted to a single discipline: opera in Santa Fe, New Mexico; theater in Williamstown, Massachusetts; concerts at Ravinia, Illinois. What the country lacked, until Menotti came along, was a multidimensional festival that both took over a city and took advantage of its architecture and history. During the Menotti era, Spoleto USA benefited and suffered from his increasingly conservative and capricious tastes. There were some noteworthy premieres, such as Arthur Miller's play The American Clock, Martha Clarke's dance Miracolo d'Amore and the Philip Glass-Allen Ginsberg opera Hydrogen Jukebox. But the constant wrangling between Menotti and the festival...
...this relaxed yet serious approach that marks Spoleto at its best. One would hope, in years to come, that the festival will give more stress to American programming-it makes little sense to celebrate Europe here, when Europe is perfectly capable of celebrating itself there. In addition, the festival could integrate itself more closely into the fabric of Charleston history by offering, for instance, concerts of mid-19th century American music in one of its great houses...