Summer festival season moves into high gear

By JOHN FLEMING

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 26, 2000

The summer music festival season gets under way early in Florida with the 36th annual edition of the Sarasota Music Festival. More than 80 student musicians arrive this weekend to begin rehearsals, and the first concert is on Thursday.

The guest faculty artist lineup is full of familiar names who return year after year to the festival, including flutist Carol Wincenc, violinists Joseph Silverstein, Ani Kavafian, Martin Chalifour and James Buswell and pianists Robert Levin and Susan Starr.

Works by composer-in-residence Lukas Foss will be featured, including his Renaissance concerto for flute and orchestra, with Wincenc as soloist, on the June 2 program, conducted by the festival's founding artistic director, Paul Wolfe.

With the Van Wezel Hall renovation still not completed, performances will be in the Sarasota Opera House and Holley Hall. The festival runs through June 17.

Tickets to nine concerts range from $15 to $30. There are also five free student concerts. The festival's tutti pass for $50 allows entrance to more than 30 events other than concerts, including master classes and coaching sessions. For information: (941) 953-3434; http://www.fwcs.org.

BEETHOVEN -- Speaking of Florida music festivals, the Florida Philharmonic's "Beethoven by the Beach" returns for its fourth season July 7-22 in Fort Lauderdale. There are six orchestra concerts and three chamber concerts. Among the highlights: the July 15 concert version of Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio, conducted by James Judd and featuring six principal singers and the Florida Philharmonic Chorus, directed by Jo-Michael Scheibe, artistic director of the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay. For information: (800) 226-1812.

SPOLETO - The Southeast's largest performing arts festival, Spoleto Festival USA, starts up today and continues through June 11 in Charleston, S.C. Opera is the cornerstone, including a Christopher Alden staging of Verdi's Luisa Miller, Bright Sheng's revised Silver River and Gluck's 18th century masterpiece Iphigenie en Tauride.

Other highlights include London's Shared Experience Theater in Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children; the U.S. premiere of Surrogate Cities, a multimedia work for 75 amplified instruments, two vocalists and projected images by German composer Heiner Goebbel; and Sweden's Cullberg Ballet in a modern version of Swan Lake.

Local note: In Praise of Buddy Hackett, a piece by University of South Florida professor and composer Paul Reller, will be performed June 7 as part of the festival's "Music in Time" series.

The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and jazz singer Dianne Reeves canceled Spoleto appearances in support of the NAACP boycott over the flying of the Confederate flag at the South Carolina capitol. Their dates were filled by dancer/choreographer Muna Tseng's solo Ambiguous Ambassador and the Marcus Roberts Trio. The festival's executive committee released a statement calling for the flag's removal.

For information: (877) 386-7765; http://www.spoletousa.org.

COPPOLA - Casting has been announced for Anton Coppola's new opera Sacco and Vanzetti, to be premiered next season by the newly named Opera Tampa at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Sacco and Vanzetti will be sung by Jeffrey Springer and Emile Fath, respectively. The opera includes 20 singers and a chorus of 25. It will be directed by Matthew Lata, and set design will be by John Farrell. Coppola will conduct the Florida Orchestra in the three performances March 16-18, 2001 at TBPAC.

THEATER - Italian playwright and actor Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist is now playing in a Jobsite Theater production at the Off Center Theater of TBPAC. Paul Potenza stars in the "grotesque farce about a tragic farce" based on the story of an anarchist railway worker who died during police interrogation. Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 7 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday through June 11. Tickets are $10-$21.50. Call (813) 229-7827.

It must be the season for leftist drama. Red Bessie, a musical treatment of the life and times of a labor organizer in New York's garment district in the 1930s, is receiving its premiere by The Players in Sarasota. Kimberly Perkins-Rabell and Preston Boyd star in the play, whose book is by Jack Gilhooley and Daniel Czitrom with protest songs made famous by the likes of Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Pete Seeger, as well as original music by Gilhooley and Boyd. Red Bessie has performances at 8 p.m. Sunday and Monday and June 4-5. Tickets are $9 and $12. Call (941) 365-2494.

Gorilla Theatre's Travels With My Aunt, scheduled to close this weekend, has extended its run with three additional shows at 8 p.m. June 2-3 and 5 p.m. June 4. Tickets are $14 and $15. Call (813) 879-2914.