Blog

Forty-five years after its triumphant production at Spoleto Festival USA in 1978, Samuel Barber’s Vanessa returns to Charleston. (Twenty years prior, its premiere in New York won Barber a Pulitzer Prize in 1958.) There is a strong Spoleto connection: Barber’s partner Gian Carlo Menotti—Spoleto’s founder—wrote […]

Spoleto Sips is back for the 2023 Festival season! The town is in the spirit! Spoleto-inspired beverages hit Charleston menus this week. During the Festival season, find these sips at the town’s hop haunts to keep you refreshed the entire 17 days. Whether you’re enjoying […]

Two things happened in Berlin on March 16, 2020:  our first child, Hugo, was born, and  the city went into full lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. This may sound glib, but at first the lockdown felt like a bit of a reprieve for a […]

As I reflect on some of the challenges of the past few years and even the first weeks of 2023, I am immeasurably grateful to serve an organization that has brought decades of wonder to audiences and spurred positive growth for its community. Spoleto Festival […]

Spoleto staffer Anna Brown remembers doing a happy dance when she heard Kishi Bashi would be part of the 2023 season lineup. (An impeccable one, surely—she was a classically trained dancer, after all.) As it turns out, Brown has long been a superfan of the […]

This season, Spoleto Festival USA presents Vanessa, Samuel Barber’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera about love, loss, and longing. With one of the most exquisite and sweepingly beautiful scores of the 20th century, the work—which The Washington Post once called “the finest American opera”—also has a unique […]

Today, Spoleto Festival USA’s General Director and CEO Mena Mark Hanna announced the appointment of Rachel Coker as Chief Advancement Officer. Coker joins the team following a months-long search conducted by Isaacson, Miller, with support from Festival Board members and senior staff.  A talented and […]

Omar, the transformative opera by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels centering the story of an enslaved Muslim scholar, received the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Columbia University announced today. The work was recognized for its expansion of the traditional opera canon, challenging its standard practice […]