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Culture The performing arts have a history as long and distinguished as Baltimore itself. The American national anthem was penned in these parts and, with the patronage of the highest members of American society, culture flourished in these parts. The central booking agency for most venues is Ticketmaster (tel: (410) 752 1200 or (800) 551 7328; website: www.ticketmaster.com). There is also Baltimore Tickets, at the Visitors Center, 451 Light Street (tel: (410) 752 8427). The magazine, Where, which lists cultural performance and events in Baltimore can often be found in hotels. There is also a monthly magazine, Baltimore Living, which lists events and offers dining suggestions, as well as an online source of information (website: www.baltimore.org). Concert Hotline (website: www.concerthotline.com) and the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, 100 Light Street, 12th Floor (tel: (410) 837 4636 or 659 7300 or (888) 225 8466; e-mail: vc@baltimore.org; website: www.baltimore.org) provides up-to-date information on cultural events. Music: The city’s main classical music venue is the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 North Cathedral Street, Mount Vernon (tel: (410) 783 8000). The Music Director Designate of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (tel: (410) 783 8000; website: www.baltimoresymphony.org), Yuri Temirkanov, is not limited only by classical music, with a musical range from Marvin Hamlisch and Linda Ronstadt to jazz inspired events and Celtic celebrations on his agenda. The Lyric Opera House, 140 West Mount Royal Avenue (tel: (410) 685 0030), is nearby and the resident Baltimore Opera Company (tel: (410) 727-6000; website: www.baltimoreopera.com) is just starting its 50th season. The Peabody Conservatory of Music, 1 Mount Vernon Place (tel:(410) 659 8100; website: www.peabody.jhu.edu/cons), the oldest such school in the USA, often schedules free recitals and concerts. Theatre: Baltimore has numerous theatres spread across the Downtown area. At the Theatre Hopkins, a brick barn dating from 1804, located at Johns Hopkins University (tel: (410) 516 7159), British and Irish plays are regularly performed. Center Stage, at the State Theater of Maryland, 700 North Calvert Street (tel: (410) 685 3200), produces a wide theatrical range, from Shakespeare to Beckett. The Everyman Theatre, 1727 North Charles Street (tel: (410) 752 2208; website: www.everymantheatre.org) has its own resident company, performing ‘Off-Broadway’ plays in an intimate setting. The Vagabond Players, 806 South Broadway, Fells Point (tel: (410) 563 9135), perform modern classics to recent Broadway successes, such as Death of a Salesman (1949) and Blood Brothers (1983). At the Morris A Mechanic Theatre, 25 Hopkins Plaza (tel: (410) 625 4230), performances are non-profit making and cover drama, music and dance. Dinner-theatre is extremely popular in Baltimore. Programmes range from variety style to classic Broadway shows. Bobby B’s Palace, 2132 Turkey Point Road (tel: (410) 687 8838; website: www.aljolson.com), specialises in impersonations of great performers, such as Al Jolson. The town of Timonium is only a 15-minute drive from Downtown Baltimore and the country’s largest and very highly critically acclaimed Timonium Dinner Theatre, 9603 Deereco Road (tel: (410) 560 1113), is located here. The menu at this family-owned and operated establishment always includes some interesting homemade specialities. Dance: This is not covered by any separate company, and includes everything from classical to Broadway shows being staged at the various theatre and music venues (see above). Film: The Senator Theatre, 5904 York Road (tel: (410) 435 8338), was built during the golden age of Hollywood and is one of few surviving examples of a real neighbourhood movie theatre. As well plenty of ordinary cinemas showing the latest Hollywood releases, there a couple of specialist venues for arthouse releases. The Baltimore Museum of Art, Art Museum Drive (tel: (410) 396 7100), takes certain themes for its screenings, whereas the Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral Street (tel: (410) 396 5430), is broader in its programme range. Maryland has been the setting for many films, most recently including the Blair Witch Project (1999). Cultural events: In the last week of April, the Baltimore Waterfront Festival, uses life on the water as the focus for entertainment, music and events. Following this, over the first two weeks of June, is the Latino Fest (website: www.eblo.org), at Patterson Park, sponsored by EBLO (the Education-Based Latino Outreach). This summer period also sees the Harborplace Birthday Celebration, on 22 June, held in the Harborplace Amphitheatre (website: www.harborplace.com). The same venue hosts the annual Baltimore Fourth of July Celebration. The July Artscape Festival, Mount Royal Avenue (tel: (410) 396 4575; website: www.artscape.org), is a combination of the visual, literary and performing arts, held indoors and out, come rain or shine. The annual Baltimore Book Festival is held in Mount Vernon, in September. On the first Thursday of every month, along the Charles Street Corridor, is a merry mix of art, displays, exhibitions, talks and music, known appropriately as First Thursday (tel: (410) 244 1030). Literary Notes Over the last two centuries, Baltimore has been home to several well-known writers, as well as featuring in their work. Ironically, two of the most famous and most strongly associated with Baltimore stand on either side of the literary fence – Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) as writer and H L Mencken (1880-1956) as critic par excellence. Poe’s house, built around 1833, is now a museum, situated west of Lexington Market, 203 Amity Street. Poe’s grave is at the Westminster Cemetery and Catacombs, on the corner of Fayette Street and Greene Street. His monument was funded by pennies collected in the 1930s, by Baltimore schoolchildren. Mencken, ‘the sage of Baltimore’, was born in the city, studied at Baltimore Polytechnic and lived mostly at 1524 Hollins Street, Union Square. As a noted philologist, editor and satirist, he became most famous for his biting, perspicacious and profound work as a literary critic, having a huge influence on American writing in the 1920s after his major work, The American Language, was published in 1918. Francis Scott Key (1799-1843) became famous for his original poem, ‘The Defence of Fort McHenry’, which he wrote on witnessing, from a British man o’ war perspective, the American flag flying throughout the unsuccessful British siege of the city. The poem was later set to music by the English composer, John Stafford Smith (using the tune of ‘To Anacreon in Heaven’), and was adopted as the US national anthem, ‘The Star Spangled Banner’, in 1931. Much of the remainder of the town’s literary past centres on the Mount Vernon district, which also hosts the annual Book Fair in September. The Mount Vernon Place Methodist Church, at the corner of East Mount Vernon Place and South Washington Place, was built in 1873, on the site where Francis Scott Key died. There is a commemorative plaque on the outside of the church. Meanwhile, F Scott Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, was treated for mental illness at the Johns Hopkins University, during which time he stayed at the Stafford Hotel – now simply 716 North Washington Place. Fitzgerald (1896-1940) later moved to 1307 Park Avenue, where he finished Tender is the Night (1934). Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), who invented the fictional stereotype of the ‘hard-boiled’ private detective, with such novels as The Maltese Falcon (1930), was born in nearby St Mary’s County. The Maltese Falcon was made into the classic 1941 film of the same name, directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart as the detective Sam Spade. There are numerous other writers who have an acquaintanceship with the city are. The master of the silly poem and snappy aphorism, Ogden Nash, moved with his wife from his hometown Rye, New York, to Rugby Road in Baltimore. For the last eight years of his life, Nash lived in Cross Keys, where he died in 1971. John Pendleton Kennedy, who lived at 12 Madison Street and was a best-selling novelist in the 1820s, was credited with inventing the idea of the genteel South. Pulitzer Prize-winner Upton Sinclair (1878-1968), was born in Baltimore, while Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) studied at Johns Hopkins University. Russell Baker, a columnist with the New York Times, based his Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography Growing Up (1995) upon his boyhood in Baltimore. Novelist Anne Tyler features the oddities and quirkiness of modern-day Baltimore in her writings, such as The Accidental Tourist (1985). |
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