French and music were taught constantly after 1733. In instrumental music lessons were given upon the harpsichord, spinet, violin, violoncello, guitar, and flute.
Advertisements for teaching Italian appear in 1764, Spanish in 1767, and Hebrew in 1769; and "a young German of undeniable character " gives notice in 1770 to " the nobility, gentry, and public that he can teach grammatically French, High and Low Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin."
There were schools for fencing for the boys, and for needlework and embroidery for the girls. The teachers were almost all from England, many of them clergymen and Masters of Art. There were many female teachers for the girls. Several of these came from London. Elizabeth Duneau from England, "who has brought up many Ladies of rank and distinction, " and has " kept one of the genteelest Boarding-schools about London," proposes in 1770 to open a boarding-school for young ladies, which she will teach "grammatically the French and English Languages, geography, history, and many instructing amusements to improve the mind," besides all kinds of fashionable needlework, and will provide good teachers in drawing, music, dancing, writing, and arithmetic.
Limners advertise to teach drawing as early as 1736, and dancing was constantly taught from 1734. In this year a dancing-school is opened in which the master, Mr. Henry Holt, lately arrived in the province, advertises that he has been taught by the most celebrated master in England and danced a considerable time at the Play House. In 1760 Nicholas Valois gives notice that he continues to teach dancing and that he has received from London "40 of the newest country dances, jiggs, rigadoons, etc., by the best masters in London, which he proposes to teach."
The next year he advertises a ball which he will give to his scholars, and will open the ball by dancing a minuet with one of them. There were two other famous dancing-schools, one of Andrew Rutledge, and the other of Thomas Pike, each of which gave balls to their scholars. Ramsay tells us that great attention was paid to music, and that many arrived at distinguished eminence in its science. The advertisements in the Gazettes fully sustain this state ment. In 1739 a person lately arrived proposes to teach " the art of Psalmody according to the exact Rule of the gamut in all the various measures, both of the old and new version. " Similar advertisements continue to appear. The organists of St. Philip's Church appear to have added to their salaries by this means.
In 1752 the vestry of St. Philip's Church send to London propositions for the employment of an organist in the place of one just dead, in which they hold out as inducements to a competent person: (l) that the voluntary subscriptions of the inhabitants for his services as organist will amount to no less than £50 sterling per annum; (2) that the benefit of teaching the harpsichord or spinet will amount at least to 100 if not 150 guineas per annum ; (3) and that the benefit of concerts which on his obliging behavior to the gentlemen and ladies of the place may amount to 300 or 400 guineas per annum more.
NYT Article on Spoletto 2010
CHARLESTON, S.C. — When the Dock Street Theater opened here in February 1736, it was ahead of the Colonial curve: “the first purpose-built theater building in America,” according to publicity materials of the Spoleto Festival USA (though some scholars see the history differently). But it was already playing catch-up in Charleston.
A year earlier the British ballad opera “Flora” had been presented in the Charleston Court Room, “the first time a musical play of any kind was performed in the American colonies,” to quote the festival again. But “Flora” soon found its way to the Dock Street Theater, in December 1736, and returned often.
So it was an inspired idea for the festival to mount a production of “Flora” on Saturday evening to celebrate the reopening of the current Dock Street Theater (a 1937 copy built on the site of the long-gone original) after a three-year renovation. More easily inspired than done, for the work has not come down in a readily performable version.
In a ballad opera, airs, often sung to popular tunes of the day, alternated with spoken dialogue. For “Flora” the libretto survives, along with at least two versions of the score. But those diverge in ways large and small, and even when the differences are reconciled, gaps remain.
The task of making “Flora” stageworthy fell to the composer Neely Bruce, a professor of music and American studies at Wesleyan University. In addition to ironing out discrepancies between the scores, he composed when he had to, supplying instrumental accompaniments, a missing song, an overture and other music to keep the work flowing.
And he did a remarkable job of it, evoking the musical world of the 18th century without aping period practice slavishly. Purcellian strains occasionally pop up amid the sounds of instruments that would have been available in Charleston in the 1730s or, in the case of the guitar, 1740s.
The rest of the production is of similarly high quality. The director, John Pascoe, shows a basic respect for a simple tale that could easily lend itself to kitsch or camp.
The ingénue Flora, well endowed (in all senses), yearns to escape the clutches (in all senses) of her dastardly uncle, Sir Thomas Testy, into the arms of the dashing Tom Friendly. And she does, through a series of farcical episodes centering on the malodorous go-between laborer Hob and his parents. The central misadventure provides the work’s subtitle, “Hob in the Well.”
Mr. Pascoe, who also designed the sets and costumes and took a hand in the lighting, effectively teases out themes of youthful rebellion, class friction and even revolutionary ardor in a work that, as he writes in a program note, “well precedes the later dramas of Beaumarchais.” “Leap into the arms of liberty,” Friendly urges Flora at one point, invoking a word that carries a special charge throughout.
Mr. Bruce conducted, from the harpsichord, members of the festival orchestra and a strong cast. Tyler Duncan sang Friendly with a strong, clear tenor, and Andriana Chuchman proved suitably charming of voice and mien as Flora. The role of Hob gave greater scope to the tenor Robert McPherson’s comic abilities than to his bel canto proclivities, but he sang (and whistled) well. The baritone Timothy Nolen, a veteran character actor, knew just what to do to make Testy ever more despicable.
As for the Dock Street Theater after an $18 million renovation, it looks much the same as the old version to the occasional visitor, perhaps a bit cleaner and warmer. The main changes involved the facilities and creature comforts, including plush padding added to the seats, without which an almost-two-hour intermissionless production of “Flora” could scarcely have been conceived.
The first festival event in the renovated theater, on Friday afternoon, was the opening concert in the chamber music series that runs twice a day throughout the festival, and here too there was significant change. This series has been part of the festival since its founding in 1977 and, through last season, it was directed by, among others, Charles Wadsworth, who was also the founding director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
Mr. Wadsworth would perform as pianist but especially relished his role as host of the concerts, for which “program notes” were dispensed orally from the stage. He increasingly adopted a down-home palaver that grated on some critics but obviously appealed to the full houses he drew regularly.
The new director of chamber music, Geoff Nuttall, though groomed for the position by Mr. Wadsworth, is a very different creature. The hard-driving first violinist of the excellent St. Lawrence String Quartet, he has developed a brash and shifting persona, variously involving spiky blond hair, no hair or tattoos on display under the cut-off sleeves of a T-shirt.
But onstage on Friday he looked plausibly like an administrator, in jacket and tie and with longish brown hair, seemingly natural. “I always thought of hair as a piece of clothing,” Mr. Nuttall said in the mildest of manners during an interview on Saturday.
He has retained the patented format for the concerts, delivering humor and solid information in shifting proportions from the stage but so far relying less on shtick than Mr. Wadsworth did, at least in recent years. Mr. Nuttall made much of the incongruity of the first work on the program, Pachelbel’s Canon in D (and the Gigue that properly follows it).
Outrageous pandering, as Mr. Nuttall jokingly suggested? No, a fascinating sidelight on history.
As he went on to note, Pachelbel’s son Charles Theodore (born in 1690 and baptized Carl Theodorus) settled in Charleston in 1736, after stops in Boston; Newport, R.I.; and (briefly) New York. A mediocre composer, he served as music director at the grand St. Philip’s Church, just a couple of blocks up Church Street from the Dock Street Theater, and some suggest that he might have played harpsichord in one or another of those early performances of “Flora.” He died poor and is said to be buried in an unmarked grave in the church’s cemetery, across Church Street.
The chamber program furthered the historical theme with the first movement of the First String Quintet by Johann Friedrich Peter, written in Salem, N.C., in the 1780s. But it can’t be said that it added much local color despite a certain rustic charm.
The rest of the program was devoted to Robert Schumann in honor of his bicentenary. The crowning glory — one of Schumann’s crowning glories — was the E flat Piano Quintet in a brilliant performance by the St. Lawrence players and the pianist Pedja Muzijevic.
Mr. Nuttall dedicated the performance to the memory of Charles E. Volpe, a supporter of the chamber series who, with his wife, Andrea L. Volpe, endowed the position Mr. Nuttall now occupies and who died in March. Accordingly, the performance showed not only virtuosity, intelligence and imagination but also extraordinary passion.
The chamber series appears to be in the best of hands.
Correction: June 2, 2010
A picture caption on Monday with a music column about the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, S.C., using information from a publicist, misidentified the pianist shown playing with Geoff Nuttall and Christopher Costanza. He is Pedja Muzijevic, not Stephen Prutsman, who also played in the concert. The column referred incompletely to the directorship of the festival’s chamber music series. In addition to Charles Wadsworth, since the festival began in 1977, Scott Nickrenz and Paula Robison were co-directors from 1978 to 1987, and Mr. Nickrenz was the director from 1987 to 1993. While Mr. Wadsworth was the host of the series from 1977 through last season, he was not the sole director. (Mr. Nuttall is the new director.)
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