Come late May in Charleston, the city buzzes with musicians, actors, dancers, and visitors for Spoleto Festival USA, one of the premier performing arts festivals in the world. “All of these different art forms come to a city that is frozen in time with cobbled streets and eighteenth-century homes, but split-screen with that you’ll see a brand new Tesla behind a horse-drawn carriage,” says Mena Mark Hanna, the festival’s general director and CEO. “To have the wonder of the performing arts spilling out into the streets all over the city is magical.” Now, the lineup for this year’s seventeen-day, multidisciplinary celebration (May 22 to June 7) is out, and it includes heavy hitters like Brandi Carlile and Emmylou Harris as well as international premieres and unique collaborations.
Pulitzer Prize–winning composer John Carlo Menotti founded the festival in 1977 as an American counterpart to the Festival of the Two Worlds he created in Spoleto, Italy, in 1958. “He was thinking about European art, opera, theater, ballet, orchestral music, chamber music, and how that art can be exported to other places,” Hanna says. “But in Charleston, it took on its own revolutionary spirit and became more experimental and imbued with jazz.”
This year, in conjunction with the 250th birthday of the United States, Spoleto’s unifying theme is freedom of expression. Early programming highlights include a celebration of Appalachian folk traditions from soprano and actress Renée Fleming and seventeen-time Grammy winner and bluegrass jazzist Béla Fleck called The Fiddle and the Drum. A few days later, Ken Burns appears for a showcase of music and discussion from his latest documentary, The American Revolution.
Other can’t-miss performances include the United States premiere of the Scottish ballet Mary, Queen of Scots, a tap performance from MacArthur Fellow Ayodele Casel, and Spoleto’s reimagined version of Gian Carlo Menotti’s 1939 radio opera The Old Maid and the Thief. For lovers of the symphony, Spoleto’s orchestra will perform Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 alongside a world premiere of composer Michael Abels’s new work, and for the jazz enthusiasts, trumpeter Terence Blanchard and Charleston native Quentin E. Baxter, among others, will explore themes of freedom, resilience, and reinvention in their shows.
For Hanna, Spoleto’s most iconic venue is the Cistern Yard, an open-air venue in the heart of the College of Charleston campus that has seen performances from the likes of Patti Smith and Jason Isbell in years past. This year, bluegrassist Molly Tuttle, country and Americana legend Emmylou Harris, and Colin Meloy of the Decemberists will play there, and Grammy Award winner Carlile will bring down the curtain on Spoleto at the Cistern on June 7.
“You’re in the middle of these mighty oak trees under a canopy of Spanish moss at night in the midst of the heat and humidity, which is heady and intoxicating in and of itself,” Hanna says. “The performances there are wholly unique and evocative of the Lowcountry spirit.”
To view the full lineup and to purchase tickets, visit spoletousa.org.
Lindsey Liles joined Garden & Gun in 2020 after completing a master’s in literature in Scotland and a Fulbright grant in Brazil. The Arkansas native is G&G’s digital reporter, covering all aspects of the South, and she especially enjoys putting her biology background to use by writing about wildlife and conservation. She lives on Johns Island, South Carolina.
