THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING UNION OF THE UNITED STATES
Creating global understanding through English
Southwest Virginia – Roanoke Branch
Newsletter – January 2015
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The SWVA Branch of ESU will welcome the New Year with the January meeting to be
held at The Shenandoah Club January 29, 2015 at 6:00 P.M., and the speaker will be
Scott Williamson of Opera Roanoke. Since its founding in 1976 as the Southwest
Virginia Opera Society, Opera Roanoke has collaborated with the finest talent in our
region, across the state and from cultural centers around the nation. Under the direction of
Victoria Bond, Craig Fields, Steven White, and Scott Williamson, Opera Roanoke has
maintained a reputation for presenting outstanding productions featuring some of the
finest singers in the opera world. Since 1998, Scott Williamson has been the General and
Artistic Director of Opera Roanoke. Since that time, 9 out 10 performances of Il
Trovatore, Carmen, The Flying Dutchman, and The Pirates of Penzance have been
capacity successes. He led the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra in Gala concerts in 2005
and 2006. He has conducted the New England Symphonic Ensemble, the Westminster
Community Orchestra, the University Shenandoah Symphony Orchestra and the
Masterworks Orchestra in repertoire. He is a well-known tenor and was featured in a solo
recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.
He has appeared with many opera groups including the New Kent Opera Festival, the
Snape Proms, and the Shakespeare Globe Theatre in Britain. His performances and stage
credits are numerous and for example include Gounod’s Faust, La Traviata, and
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. His performances have been praised by the New York
Times, the Times of London, Opera News, the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun.
As a professional ensemble singer, he has appeared with New York’s premiere choruses
under the batons of such distinguished conductors as Levine, Maazel, Masur, Salonen,
Hickox, Rilling, Botstein and Sawallisch. An academic since 1996, he has served as
Director of choral and vocal activities at Shepherd University and Associate Director of
choral and vocal activities at Washington and Lee University, where he frequently returns
as a visiting artist and professor. He holds degrees from James Madison University and
Westminster Choir College, and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University
of Maryland. He has studied in Germany at the Franz Liszt Hochschule in Weimar, the
International Young Artists Festival in Bayreuth, and the Britten-Pears Young Artist
Programme. An award-winning poet, his latest work was featured in the Fall 2013 edition
of the Atlanta Review. (Source – Opera Roanoke)
BRANCH NEWS
The future meetings of the SWVA ESU Branch will be Thursday March 19, 2015 with
the speaker Dr. Rob Havers of the George C. Marshall Foundation at VMI. The next
meeting will be the annual Wrench Speaker meeting and will feature Sir Robert Rogers
KCB, Clerk of the British House of Commons who will speak on the topic, A Universal
Charter? The Legacy of the Magna Carter. President Arend urges you attend both
meetings and bring guests.
PERSIFLAGE
1. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can't see.
2. If people are talking behind your back, be happy that you are the one in front.
3. I am on a seafood diet. I see food, and I eat it.
4. Cell phones these days keep getting thinner and smarter... people the opposite.
5. I'm old enough to know better, but young enough to do it anyway.
6. Smile today, tomorrow could be worse.
7. Who says nothing is impossible? I've been doing nothing for years.
8. When you fall, I will be there to catch you - With love, the floor.
9. A best friend is like a four leaf clover, hard to find, lucky to have.
10. I'm not lazy, I'm just very relaxed.
(Source - Cool Funny Quotes)
Test Yourself with these few lines from Shakespeare
The childing autumn, angry winter change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazèd world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension.
We are their parents and original.
These few lines from Shakespeare were taken from A Midsummer-Nights Dream, (IIi)
and were spoken by Titania, queen of the fairies. A variety of sources provided material
for the play. Ovid’s Metamorphosis and Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale seem to be the sources
for Titania. Authorities think that Titania’s description of the cold summer of 1594 may
indicate the probable date of the play that was first published in quarto edition in 1600.
(reb – 1/7/15)