“Spoleto Festival USA will have its feet in two different eras when it returns May 27 for its 17-day run,” writes Michael Smallwood in Friday’s (2/11) Charleston City Paper (SC). “After a completely canceled 2020 season and a small but safe 2021 festival, 2022’s slate of art, music, theater and performances is … jam-packed…. This year’s festival will feature the world premiere of Omar, a brand new opera [by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels] based on the 1831 autobiography of Omar Ibn Said … [a] Muslim African scholar who was forced into slavery in the Carolinas…. Within and beyond Omar, Spoleto’s program explores migration—be it forced, exiled or voluntary, [new general director Mena Mark] Hanna said. [Playwright] Dael Orlandersmith’s [one-woman show] Until the Flood … examines the aftermath of the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.… Choreographer Reggie Wilson’s POWER will [focus] on the lives of Black Shaker communities.… And, of course, there will be the keystone presentations in the Bank of America Chamber Music series…. The Spoleto Festival USA Chorus” will perform with the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra and Charleston Symphony Orchestra Chorus in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
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