Clark Art Airs Production of 'I Puritani'

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Clark Art Institute continues its broadcasts of The Met: Live in HD's 2025–26 season with Vincenzo Bellini's "I Puritani" on Saturday, Jan. 11 at 1 pm. 
 
This award-winning series of live, high-definition cinema simulcasts features the full live performance along with backstage interviews and commentary. The Clark broadcasts the opera in its Manton Research Center auditorium.
 
According to a press release:
 
For gorgeous melody, spellbinding coloratura, and virtuoso vocal fireworks, I Puritani has few equals. In the first new Met production of Bellini's final masterpiece in nearly fifty years, Charles Edwards makes his company directorial debut after many successes as a set designer. The Met has assembled a world-beating quartet of stars, conducted by Marco Armiliato, for the demanding principal roles. Soprano Lisette Oropesa and tenor Lawrence Brownlee are Elvira and Arturo, brought together by love and torn apart by the political rifts of the English Civil War, with baritone Artur Rucinski as Riccardo, betrothed to Elvira against her will, and bass-baritone Christian Van Horn as Elvira's sympathetic uncle, Giorgio.
 
To complement the opera's underlying theme of battle over governance, the Clark's Manton Study Center for Works on Paper hosts a pop-up exhibition of prints and drawings highlighting artists' representations of government in its many forms. The free pop-up display is on view from 11 am to 1 pm on January 11, prior to the broadcast.  
 
The Clark is showing a prerecorded broadcast of this production.
 
Tickets $25 ($22 members, $18 college students, $5 children 17 and under). Advance registration encouraged; capacity is limited. To purchase tickets, visit events.clarkart.edu or call the box office at 413 458 0524. No refunds.
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Williamstown Elementary Principal Making Plans to Use New Math Position

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Williamstown Elementary School's principal last week told the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee that the best use of an additional $120,000 in the fiscal year 2027 budget is to hire a math interventionist for the school.
 
Benjamin Torres on Wednesday gave the board an update on the school with a focus on the need to address instruction in mathematics.
 
Those concerns prompted a request from the WES School Council to include the full-time math interventionist position in the FY27 budget.
 
School councils are committees of staff and community members in each building of a regional school district that are charged with assessing and advocating for the needs of individual schools.
 
Although funding for the position was not included in what district administrators characterized as a "level services" budget that it sent to both member towns, some Williamstown parents took their case directly to town meeting, which voted to amend the town's assessment to the district, adding the additional $120,000 to cover salary and benefits for new position.
 
Torres last week reminded the School Committee of the arguments he made for an interventionist when he presented the School Council's report back in February.
 
"My goal is to highlight the amazing growth we've seen with our students and the amazing work being done by our teachers, but also highlight there's a small group of students who are not closing the gaps quickly enough to be prepared to be successful at the upcoming grade level," Torres said. "This is why the School Council has been advocating not just for an interventionist but for a more systematic approach when it comes to interventions."
 
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