Saratoga Performing Arts Center
SPAC
Just a couple of miles south of downtown lies 2000 acres of beautiful sprawling state park, and inside the park you have the magnificent Saratoga Performing Arts Center. The Center, or SPAC, as it's known locally, is an 5,100-seat indoor-outdoor amipitheater that opens each season with top-name performers and also serves as the summer home for the New York City Ballet. It's also the summer home of top musical companies, such as the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Newport-Saratoga Jazz Festival. Other repertoires include the Saratoga Chamber Music Festival, the Lake George Opera and the Freihofer's Jazz Festival. In addition to these anchor performers, there are numerous pop and rock concerts here each season as well. Look over the summer schedule and you will actually see something for everyone: chamber, jazz, opera, folk performances as well as Pre-Performance Talks and the Saratoga Wine & Food Festival. Calling themselves the cultural hub of upstate New York and other surrounding areas such as the Hudson Valley, Vermont, the Berkshires, Connecticut, and nearby Canada, SPAC boasts a superb ampitheater whose acoustics are perfect and whose atmosphere is purely enjoyable and pleasant.
SPAC History
In 1961 the New York Philharmonic was looking for a summer home, and their number one choice was Stowe, Vermont. The idea of a New York-based company looking outside of New York State for its summer home seemed preposterous to a journalist based in Albany, NY. He wrote a column and proposed the New York Philharmonic make its summer home in the State Reservation at Saratoga Springs. The grounds were sprawling and beautiful, and best of all, located in New York State. The idea became popular, and people listened. More importantly, important powerful people listened, and within a week local leaders had met, and within a month the wheels were in motion for a performing arts center in Saratoga, New York. Within two years, money was rolling in, form everyone from school kids to the Rockefeller brothers. Ironically, the dropped out, but the New York City Ballet's cofounders, George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein quickly came on board, as did the Philadelphia Orchestra and its artistic director Eugene Ormandy. Ground was broken in 1964 and on July 8, 1966, the first performance was held, given by the New York City Ballet Orchestra and their Conductor Robert Irving. The performance was Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. One month later, The Philadelphia Orchestra's Maestro Ormandy led in Beethoven’s Consecration of the House Overture, which was a tribute to the new Amphitheatre at SPAC.
Non-classical performers were brought in to raise money for the classical repertoires, for serving as the summer home for the Balley and the Philharmonic. Harry Belafonte was the first non-classical performer to give a show at SPAC, in 1967. One year later The Doors gave a memorable performance at SPAC, thus beginning the tradition of bringing top pop and rock named to the ampitheater.
The Ampitheater
The ampitheater itself is perfectly situation in the park in a naturally-curving bowl in the landscape. It's 110 feet high, which is the equivalent of 10 stories. It's set against a background of towering pine trees and sweeping green manicured lawns, and summer weather in Saratoga is perfect. There are seats inside for 5,100 people, and behind them the sloping lawn has room for another 20,000 people to enjoy the show. The ampitheater was built to comfortably hold a full symphony orchestra, since of course SPAC was begun to entice a full symphony orchestra to make its summer home here. The floor of the ampitheater was specially designed just for the New York City Balley, and is among the best engineered ballet floors.
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