Clark Art Airs Production of 'La Sonnambula'

08:25AM / Tuesday, October 14, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Metropolitan Opera's broadcast of "La Sonnambula" airs at the Clark Art Institute on Saturday, Oct. 18 at 1 pm, kicking off the 2025–26 season of The Met: Live in HD.

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:

Following triumphant Met turns in "Roméo et Juliette," "La Traviata," and "Lucia di Lammermoor," Nadine Sierra summits another peak of the soprano repertoire as Amina, who sleepwalks her way into audiences' hearts in Bellini's poignant tale of love lost and found. In his new production, Rolando Villazón—the tenor who has embarked on a brilliant second career as a director—retains the opera's original setting in the Swiss Alps but uses its somnambulant plot to explore the emotional and psychological valleys of the mind. Tenor Xabier Anduaga returns after his acclaimed 2023 Met debut in "L'Elisir d'Amore," co-starring as Amina's fiancé Elvino, alongside soprano Sydney Mancasola as her rival, Lisa, and bass Alexander Vinogradov as Count Rodolfo. Riccardo Frizza takes the podium for one of opera's most ravishing works.

To complement the broadcast, the Clark's Manton Study Center for Works on Paper hosts a pop-up exhibition of works related to the theme of dreams and sleep. The selected prints, drawings, and photographs all engage with that mysterious state of being between consciousness and unconsciousness, reason and fantasy. The free pop-up display is on view from 11 am to 1 pm on Oct. 18, prior to the broadcast of La Sonnambula.

Tickets $25 ($22 members, $18 college students, $5 children 17 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.

Tags: Clark Art,

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Discrimination Against Muslim Americans Persists 25 Years After 9/11

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
07:00AM / Saturday, September 12, 2026

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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