Spoleto Festival finds the sunny side

By Dottie Ashley
The Post and Courier
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Previous story

Spoleto ticket sales hint at a stellar 2009 season, published 01/10/09

An appropriate theme for the 2009 Spoleto Festival USA might be: “Gray skies are going to clear up; put on a happy face.” For certain, this phrase characterized the mood at the festival’s winter meeting Saturday.

The 17-day comprehensive arts festival, founded in 1977, has had its financial roller coasters rides, not the least of which came last year when the festival concluded with a deficit of $372,000.

Tasha Gandy, the festival’s director of finance, announced Saturday the organization’s two endowments, Wachovia Bank and the Coastal Community Foundation, are both down 30 percent.

To help stem the losses, the budget has been cut from $8.4 million for the 2008 festival to $6.8 million for the 2009 festival to be held May 22 through June 7 in Charleston.

Even the festival’s most lucrative fundraiser, the Spoleto Auction, held Friday at Memminger Auditorium, brought in only $110,000 compared to last year’s $159,000.

But to demonstrate that, for sure, the show will go on, General Director Nigel Redden displayed a model of this season’s only opera, Gustave Charpentier’s “Louise,” to be set in Paris and performed at Gaillard Auditorium downtown.

Also, the board welcomed its new board chairwoman Martha Rivers Ingram, a Charleston native who lives in Nashville, Tenn.

And Lou Hammond of the marketing committee announced that $88,000 has been sold in group package ticket sales toward a ticket goal of $2.3 million. Redden said sales were ahead of sales this time last year. No count was given for single ticket sales at this point.

Other news was that John and Norma Palms, co-chairs of the Dock Street Theatre/ Memminger Auditorium campaigns, reported that only $600,000 is needed to pay off the renovation of Memminger, which cost $6.1 million. The building was used last season at Spoleto for operas and chamber music.

Meanwhile, about half of Spoleto’s $3.3 million financial commitment to renovate Dock Street Theatre has been raised. The renovation cost of Dock Street is being shared by Spoleto and the city of Charleston.

The theater is expected to be ready to be used by Spoleto by 2010.

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