The stage is set
The Palladium Theater announces its most ambitious season, positioning it to take a leading role in downtown St. Petersburg's arts renaissance.
By JOHN FLEMING
Published August 21, 2005
ST. PETERSBURG - Mark Spano is still marveling at Madame Butterfly. On the second weekend in June, two performances by a community opera company and orchestra sold out the 880-seat Palladium Theater.
"What was the silver bullet? Why did we sell out?" Spano asked two months later. "Puccini sold those tickets, I firmly believe that. I wanted a piece that people wanted to see. It wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it was pretty darn good. And where you gonna see an opera with an orchestra for 15 bucks?"
Affordable tickets undoubtedly did spur attendance, but seven years after it opened as a community arts venue, the Palladium had a production of its own that played to sellout crowds.
The theater converted from a Christian Science church is poised to enhance and benefit from the cultural renaissance under way in downtown St. Petersburg. The longtime main venue, city-owned Mahaffey Theater, is closed for renovation until March. And while much of the focus has been on the visual arts downtown, the Palladium should help give the performing arts a higher profile, along with the 28-year-old mainstay, American Stage, and newer venues such as Studio@620.
Spano, in his second season as executive director since arriving from North Carolina, emphasizes that the Palladium will maintain its focus as a community-based venue. He described the new season as a "step out, rather than a step up. I'm not doing anything that is outside the mission that the Palladium has had. Once you get your existence solidified, then you raise the bar. And we're doing that."
Violinist Ani Kavafian and other members of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society will appear as part of a weeklong St. Petersburg Chamber Music Festival, along with concerts by Tampa Bay area ensembles in other venues. The Encore series, with its healthy commitment to contemporary chamber music, will be back for its sixth season.
The Palladium will stage The Barber of Seville. Garrett Sorenson, a rising young tenor from the Metropolitan Opera, will sing a recital after spending a week working with students in Pinellas schools. Sunstate Opera and other companies will perform.
Bolstered by the donation of a Steinway concert grand, given in the name of Palladium founder Paul Stavros, the theater will have a recital series of first-rate pianists. The Skinner organ series has moved to Sunday afternoon and will present well-known bay area organists.
Jazz stars Chick Corea and Karrin Allyson will appear with the USF Jazz Surge. Pianist Dick Hyman will give a concert from movie scores he composed, arranged and played on (Moonstruck, Everyone Says I Love You, Zelig, Purple Rose of Cairo).
Spano is experimenting with jazz, pop and rock. The Side Door Jazz Cabaret, convened the third Thursday of the month, has featured musicians such as the Jeremy Carter Quartet and Nate Najar Trio. Saturday night, rockers Auditorium, Rebekah Pulley and the Diviners perform an acoustic show.
The Palladium is working on three film series. A French film series will begin in November, with a gay and lesbian film series in January. There are plans afoot for a world film festival.
Dar Webb, a Palladium board member and sponsor of the Encore series, thinks that arts and culture will only become more important in St. Petersburg. Webb, a real estate developer, estimates that 5,000 housing units are in the pipeline for downtown.
"I think more people living downtown is what's going to make everything else happen," she said. "It's almost as though the city has been ramping up for those people to arrive and start using what we've put in place."
Webb, whose projects include a seven-story building one block from the Palladium, imagines bustling activity on streets that were virtually abandoned not long ago.
"I can see jazz clubs, much more nightlife on Central Avenue," she said. "I can see the Palladium not wondering whether we were going to get 300 people to an Encore concert. I'm hoping there'll be a little more avant-garde going on. We've got high culture pretty thoroughly in place; it's the low culture we might need a little more of."
Some of the avant-garde things Webb is hoping for could be at Studio@620, a gallery that also presents theater, music, dance and poetry. "The scene is nascent at this point, but it's definitely developing," said Bob Devin Jones, artistic director of the gallery.
The Palladium has some pitfalls to avoid. More than a few fledgling arts institutions have fallen afoul of success. Spano readily admits the Palladium still has major issues to resolve. Parking, restrooms and the phone and ticketing systems were strained for well-attended shows.
"Yes, they're all issues. I will not deny any of those issues," he said.
During the Madame Butterfly performances, which drew a large walk-up crowd, Spano made an executive decision. "I converted both of the downstairs bathrooms to exclusively womens' rooms, and I stood guard. We have only four bathrooms, two of each. We do need to expand the ladies room facilities."
The theater's air conditioning is to be upgraded this month, he said. "We are also replacing the ticketing system. The fact is, during a 45-minute period if you've got 400 walk-ups, the system we have now will not process those credit cards in time. We will have a system that does that by the time the season opens."
The Palladium is hampered by its origin as a church. Theatrical basics such as wing space, flies and an orchestra pit are lacking. Sight lines are problematic; seats could be more comfortable.
Not everything went swimmingly last season. American Stage had several musical productions at the Palladium, including My Way, a Frank Sinatra revue, that didn't do as well as the theater company had hoped.
The community aspect of the Palladium is, in part, a function of its size and operating costs. In many ways, Stavros founded it to complement the Mahaffey. At 2,000 seats, with its stage crew covered by a union contract, Mahaffey is too big and expensive for many productions. That created problems for the Mahaffey Theater Foundation, which had a generally woeful track record of presenting everything from ballet to Broadway shows to Elvis imitators until throwing in the towel last year.
"The Palladium has a niche of being a hall where community groups can afford to put on performances," said Marcus Greene, a Palladium board member. "The cost structure of the Palladium, being a nonunion hall, is a lot different than the Mahaffey."
Greene, a banker who was on the board of the Mahaffey Foundation, said that "on a per-seat basis, it's about half as expensive to put a show on at the Palladium as at the Mahaffey."
Spano vows the Palladium will keep ticket prices down (a top ticket is $18 this season) and never lose sight of its mission.
"With everything we're doing, there's always some kind of connection with the community," he said. "In the future, I may have as many as 10 national acts, but I'm not going to have seven a week, like Mahaffey could have. That's not what the Palladium is about. When we bring in a national act, it will be coming here not just to give a performance; it will be coming here also to engage with local artists or students."
-- John Fleming can be reached at 727 893-8716 or fleming@sptimes.com
PALLADIUM THEATER 2005-06 SCHEDULEThe Palladium is at 253 Fifth Ave. N, St. Petersburg; 727 822-3590; www.palladiumtheater.com Single tickets range from $12 to $18. Season memberships, which start at $50 for an individual, provide a 10 percent discount on tickets and other benefits.
DANCE PROJECT 2005-06: Alice in Wonderland and Songs From My Childhood, Sept. 24 and 25; First Night St. Petersburg, Waltzes from Old Vienna, Dec. 31; Peter and the Wolf, Feb. 19; Spring performance, April 8
THE PALLADIUM AMERICAN SONGBOOK SERIES WITH PAUL WILBORN AND BLUE ROSES: Love and Other Natural Disasters, Oct. 7; Poets of Tin Pan Alley, Jan. 13; Let's Misbehave, May 12
PINELLAS YOUTH SYMPHONY: Nov. 19, March 11, May 7
FLORIMEZZO ORCHESTRA: Nov. 4, March 28, June 17
MASTER CHORALE: Feb. 18
TAMPA ORATORIO SINGERS WITH MEMBERS OF THE FLORIDA ORCHESTRA: Mozart Requiem, March 20
THE PALLADIUM VOCAl ARTS PROGRAM: Metropolitan Opera tenor Garrett Sorenson, Feb. 11
CIRCUS SARASOTA CLOWN HOLIDAY SHOW: Dec. 4
JAZZ AT THE PALLADIUM: Dick Hyman at the Movies, Sept. 11; Dan McMillion Jazz Orchestra, Sept. 16; Profiles in Jazz, Dec. 3
RICK GEE'S JAZZJAMM: Tribute to John Lamb, Dec. 8; tribute to Lillette Jenkins-Wisner, Feb. 16; tribute to the Manzy Harris/Rey Davis Bands, March 18
USF JAZZ MASTERWORKS: USF Jazz Surge with guest artist David Baker, Oct. 8; USF Jazz Surge with guest artist Gordon Goodwin, Nov. 26; USF Jazz Surge with guest artist Karrin Allyson, Feb. 26; USF Jazz Surge with guest artist Chick Corea, April 22
SUNSTATION SHOW CHORUS: The Music of Your Life '30s, '40s, '50s, Nov. 12; Hollywood Live, Jan. 15; Roaring Twenties, April 2
BROADWAY ON FIFTH AVENUE: FLORIDA LYRIC OPERA: Scenes from Porgy and Bess, Oct. 9; scenes from Brigadoon, Nov. 20; scenes from South Pacific, Jan. 20; scenes from My Fair Lady, March 5; scenes from The King and I, May 14
ST. PETERSBURG COLLEGE CHORUS: Veterans Day tribute, Nov. 12
STEINWAY SERIES: Rebecca Penneys, Nov. 6; Henry Kelder, Dec. 11; Chantal Stigliani, Feb. 23; Arthur Greene, March 3; Svetozar Ivanov, May 5
R&B: Jeremy Carter Soul Review, Dec. 2
BLUEGRASS: Bluegrass Parlor Band, Gypsy Wind and Southern Star, Oct. 14
SKINNER ORGAN SERIES: Bob Winslow, Jan. 8; Jack Rains, Feb. 5; David Matthews, March 26; Kurt Knecht, May 21
SUNSTATE OPERA: Celebration of Italian Love Songs, Oct. 15 and 16; Die Fledermaus, March 30 and 31, April 2
MORE OPERA: La Boheme, Jan. 21; opera artists from Italy, Feb. 24; USF Department of Music, The Magic Flute, late April or early May; The Barber of Seville, June 3 and 4
MUSIC FOR THE SEASON: Christmas with the Tampa Oratorio Singers and the Florida Orchestra Brass Quintet, Dec. 5; Herald Vocal Arts Ensemble, Dec. 9; Langston Hughes' Black Nativity, Dec. 17 and 18; musical gifts for the season with HSQ and soprano Julia Coulmas, Dec. 21
ENCORE CHAMBER MUSIC SERIES: Florida Orchestra Brass Quintet, Jan. 24; Myakka River Piano Trio, Feb. 7; Alstadter/Sanderling Duo and Orchid, Feb. 21; Russian Heritage Ensemble, March 7; Quantum Winds with Dee Moses, March 21; Reflections, April 4; Gulf Chamber Players, April 18; Herald Vocal Arts Ensemble, May 2
CHILDREN'S THEATER: Mother Goose, Oct. 2; The Ugly Duckling, Nov. 13; Santa's Holiday Review, Dec. 11; Rumpelstiltskin, Jan. 29; Snow White, April 9
ST. PETERSBURG CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL: Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Feb. 3; master class with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Feb. 4
LYRIC THEATER CONSERVATORY: Little Shop of Horrors, Oct. 29, 30 and 31