Spoleto Festival USA
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the Spoleto Festival Italy, see Festival dei Due Mondi.
Spoleto Festival USA is an annual 17-day festival of the arts which produces opera, and presents dance, theater, classical music, and jazz. The Festival is held in Charleston, South Carolina in late May and early June. Spoleto Festival USA was founded in 1977 by Gian Carlo Menotti, Christopher Keene, and others as an American counterpart to Festival dei Due Mondi (the "Festival of Two Worlds"), a festival which is held in Spoleto, Italy.
Charleston was chosen as the location for the festival due to its wealth of theaters and other performance spaces. Each year, the festival hosts over 100 performances by international artists in a variety of disciplines. Since its inception, it has presented 100 international premieres and 93 American premieres, notably Creve Coeur by Tennessee Williams and The American Clock by Arthur Miller. World-renowned artists who performed at Spoleto Festival USA early in their careers include Renée Fleming, Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Joanna Simon and Yo-Yo Ma.
Spoleto Festival USA claims an audience of between 70,000 and 80,000 each year.
