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's Cost Rising for Emergency Bank Restoration

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The cost to stabilize the bank of the Hoosic River near a town landfill continues to rise, and the town is still waiting on the commonwealth's blessing to get to work.
 
Department of Public Works Director Craig Clough was before the Finance Committee on Wednesday to share that, unlike the town hoped, the emergency stabilization work will require bringing in a contractor — and that is before a multimillion dollar project to provide a long-term solution for the site near Williams College's Cole Field.
 
"I literally got the plans last Friday, and it's not something we'll be able to do in-house," Clough told the committee. "They're talking about a cofferdam of a few hundred feet, dry-pumping everything out and then working along the river. That's something that will be beyond our manpower to do, our people power, and the equipment we have will not be able to handle it."
 
Clough explained that the cofferdam is similar to the work done on the river near the State Road (Route 2) bridge on the west side of North Adams near West Package and Variety Stores.
 
"We don't know the exact numbers yet of an estimate," Clough said. "The initial thought was $600,000 a few months ago. Now, knowing what the plans are, the costs are going to be higher. They did not think there was going to need to be a coffer dam put in [in the original estimate]."
 
The draft capital budget of $592,500 before the Fin Comm includes $500,000 toward the riverbank stabilization project.
 
The town's finance director told the committee he anticipates having about $700,000 in free cash (technically the "unreserved fund balance") to spend in fiscal year 2027 once that number is certified by the Department of Revenue in Boston.
 
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