Clark Art Airs Live Production of 'Aida'

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Metropolitan Opera's broadcast production of "Aida" airs at the Clark Art Institute on Saturday, Jan. 25 at 12:30 pm in the latest installment of the 2024–25 season of The Met: Live in HD.
 
The award-winning series of high-definition cinema simulcasts features the full performance along with backstage interviews and commentary. The Clark broadcasts the opera in its auditorium, located in the Manton Research Center.
 
According to a press release:
 
American soprano Angel Blue headlines as the Ethiopian princess torn between love and country in a new production of Verdi's Aida by Michael Mayer that brings audiences inside the towering pyramids and gilded tombs of ancient Egypt with intricate projections and dazzling animations. Romanian-Hungarian mezzo-soprano Judit Kutasi also stars as Aida's rival, Amneris, alongside Polish tenor Piotr Becza?a as the soldier Radame?s—completing opera's greatest love triangle. Met Music Director Yannick Ne?zet-Se?guin takes the podium to conduct.
 
Tickets $25 ($22 members, $18 students, $5 children 15 and under). Advance registration encouraged; capacity is limited. To purchase tickets, visit clarkart.edu/events or call the box office at 413 458 0524. No refunds.
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Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dozens of Muslim Americans were among people killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
 
Untold numbers of Muslim Americans have suffered countless acts of discrimination in their aftermath.
 
"Of course, you'll find several accounts of Muslims from all over the U.S. describing how they went from the unknown kids in the school to being stereotyped or ridiculed for their Muslim names," Sidra Mahmood recalled recently. "However, many Americans forget that the victims of 9/11 were also Muslim Americans.
 
"I can't forget the time when a classmate broke down in sobs when 9/11 came up in our classroom at the Islamic seminary I went to in Texas, because her father's best friend who was like an uncle to her, died on 9/11."
 
Today, Mahmood is a chaplain at Williams College. In 2001, she was growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, when terrorists forced two passenger jets into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan and another plane into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. A third plane, which terrorists hoped to crash into a D.C. landmark, was brought down in western Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back against the hijackers.
 
The attacks, which ultimately claimed 2,976 lives, horrified people around the world, including in Mahmood's native land.
 
"I remember being aghast like anyone who witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers in real time," she said. "However, even as a child, fear gripped me about the possibility of war, especially once we learned that Afghanistan, right adjacent to Pakistan, would be attacked by the U.S. My mother had told me about the 1971 war between India and Pakistan when she remembered hiding in the dark after bomb sirens would go off in Punjab after intentional blackouts.
 
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