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Spoleto Festival
Cheap Charlie · July 24, 2000

I know that many of you may feel that this column is quite a departure from my normal rants. However, look at it this way - a trip to Charleston, South Carolina, for most of us is easier and far less expensive than flying across the Atlantic to Spoleto, Italy. Hence, there may be a certain savings angle to my pitch.

What I consider North America's best overall arts festival, the Spoleto Festival USA, has just started in Charleston and will continue through June 11th.

This southern port is the perfect venue for this festival - better than Spoleto itself. It is large and sophisticated enough to provide a knowledgeable audience and appropriate theaters, yet small enough to be dominated by the non-stop arts festival.

For 17 days Charleston offers something for every art lover, from formal opera, symphony orchestra, chamber music and ballet, to theater, jazz, samba, folk and modern dance. In addition, Piccolo Spoleto, the city-organized companion festival, extends the more formal offerings of the festival to include a thousand additional artists performing and exhibiting in the city's churches, parks, playgrounds, streets and storefronts.

Tightly woven between old Charleston's cobblestone roadways, classic churches and elegant mansions of the Old South, the festival creates a magical combination of music, theater, painting and dance - classical to contemporary, traditional to modern.

This is the real thing. And much of what is created and performed here in this 18th-century city is unique and often a world premier. It is only natural in a city of so many firsts - home to America's first theater, the country's first ballet company, and the oldest musical organization in the nation.

I grew up in Italy - Naples to be exact. Initially, my mother took my brother and me religiously to the opera and the orchestra at the renowned San Carlo Opera House. I swore I would hate it. I was sure I would.

My first opera was William Tell. When I heard the overture, I looked at my mother and asked, "It this opera?" She nodded and smiled.

The next week my brother got to see Aida as his introduction. In Naples at the time they paraded live animals across the stage followed by a costumed character to clean up after beats droppings. That was his favorite part together with the trumpeted triumphal march.

Needless to say, both my brother and I developed a love of orchestral and chamber music and opera that we still have today. You can guess that my mother rarely got to many operas after both my brother and I began our voyage of classical music discovery. Today, I can return the favor to Mom each year in Charleston, though I have yet to see an elephant traipse across a South Carolina stage.

Spoleto, since I discovered it five years ago, has become an annual performing arts pilgrimage for me. I know of no other place where enthusiasts can enjoy so many different forms of art from orchestra to chamber music, ballet to modern dance, jazz to folkloristic tunes, and from the circus and street art to little theater and full-scale opera.

For information, tickets and arrangements call 1-800-386-7765 or visit www.spoletousa.org.

As they say in that credit card commercial, "It's priceless."

Charlie Leocha is the Boston-based author of Travel Rights: Know the Rules of the Road and the Air Before You Go. Cheap Charlie appears every Monday on this site. E-mail him at charlie@ticked.com or access his Web site.