Spoleto Festival USA

Spoleto Festival USA began in 1977 when Gian Carlo Menotti, the Pulitzer Prize-winning operatic composer, decided to create an American companion to the Festival dei Due Mondi (Festival of Two Worlds) in Spoleto, Italy. 

He looked all over America and chose Charleston.  Here's why: “It’s intimate, so you can walk from one theatre to the next.  It has Old World charm in architecture and gardens.  Yet it’s a community big enough to support the large number of visitors to the festival.”

Spoleto Festival USA has grown exponentially in size and influence in the decades ever since.

For 17 days each year, at the end of May through the beginning of June, the arts take over Charleston.  World-class performances of music, theater, dance and opera abound, all across the historic downtown peninsula and beyond.  Venues include the newly redesigned Gaillard Center, as well as theaters, churches, historic sites and outdoor spaces.

Some Spoleto 2022 Stats:

• Over 60,000 audience members;
• Nearly 300 artists performing;
• More than 10 world and U.S. premieres;
• 120 performances.

Spoleto 2022 hosted the much-anticipated world premiere of "Omar: A New Opera."  Spoleto commissioned Grammy-winning (and MacArthur Fellow) Rhiannon Giddens to write the full-length opera, which was supposed to premiere in 2020.   The work is based on the rare autobiography of Omar Ibn Said, an enslaved man who arrived in Charleston in 1807.  Omar was one of three operas performed at this year's Spoleto.  The 46th annual Spoleto Festival ran from May 27th through June 12th, 2022, and by all estimations was a rousing success.