ENDACOTT SOCIETY
March 2005
Retired Faculty and Staff of the
University of Kansas
www.ukans.edu/~emeritus
SCHEDULED EVENTS—March 2005
All activities meet at the Adams
Alumni Center unless otherwise noted.
Spring Break is March 21-27, 2005.
SNOW
POLICY REMINDER—There will be no meeting on
Wednesday morning if the Lawrence Public Schools are closed due to bad weather.
This will directly affect the Computer Study Group, Gardening Seminar, Ten
O’clock Scholars, and the Music Group. KANU, KLWN, and Channel 6 as well as the
KU Alumni Center office will be informed. All other interest groups should
develop their own policies. The Executive Committee
Afternoon Lecture Series—Rita Haugh (843-7613), Megan Schoeck
(mschoeck@sunflower.com &
841-6008), and Howard O’Connor (843-1884)
March
10 at 2:30—Jerry Dobson of the
Department of Geography, an expert in Geographic Information Systems (GIS),
will enlighten us on the subject of GIS and how it affects us.
Bill
Hambleton (wwhamble@ku.edu & 843-2508) is
in charge of programs for the Afternoon Lecture Series.
Armchair
Travel—Stitt Robinson (wsrobin@ku.edu
& 843-1499)
No
meeting in March. Next program on April 28. Jane and Al Sellen will take
us to Italy.
Card and Game Theory—Ruth
Culvahouse (842-0626 & jwcul@ku.edu)
March
17 at 1:30—The sign-up sheet will be available during
Coffee on Wednesday mornings. Any questions should be referred to Ruth
Culvahouse.
Cinema Studies—Grant Goodman (plim@ku.edu & 841-1066) and Fred Madaus
(fmadaus@ku.edu & 841-4939)
March 15 at 2:00—Cinema
Studies will do something completely different and will show the comedy Monty
Python and the Holy Grail. Coffee and other beverages are available
at 1:45 p.m. Everyone is welcome
Computer Study Group—Oliver
Phillips (ophil4988@sbcglobal.net & 842-1020)
March 2 at 9:00—Rahman,
Geek Squad of BestBuy: P(ersonal) D(igital) A(ssistants)
March 9 at 9:00—Dr.
Fixit
March 16 at 9:00—Dale
Rummer, Home Office Networking: Four computers, three printers and
three scanners
March 30 at 9:00—Helen
Crockett: Creating Greeting Cards
Domestic Public Policy Study Group—Jim Drury (jdrury@ku.edu &
842-3308) and John Poertner (jpoertner@sunflower.com & 749-2599)
March
7 at 3:30—TBA.
April 4 will be Bill Lacey, Director of the Dole
Institute of Politics. He will discuss
election law reform
Drama Study Group—Arnold
Weiss (ahweiss@ku.edu &
842-5502)
March 11 at
1:30 in the Music Room, to pick up J. B.
Priestley's Eden End with Act II. And as so often happens, Act
III also awaits. Further details, if required, will be revealed at Ten O'clock
Scholar gatherings.
Evening
Lecture Series—Tom Eblen
(teblen@sunflower.com & 865-3634)—Program Chairs: Tom Hedrick
(843-7311) & Tom Eblen (teblen@sunflower.com & 865-3634
March
31—wine, cheese and bread at 5:30; potluck
at 6; presentation by Philip Brownlee, editorial page editor of the Wichita
Eagle, scheduled for 7. “He'll have plenty to say about the Legislature,
and he'll welcome questions.”
Foreign
Policy Study—Margo Gordon (msgordon@ku.edu &
842-1848)
March 14 at 3:30—Topic will be
"U.S. Challenges in Iraq and in the Muslim World." Howard Baumgartel will be in charge of the
program. All are invited.
Gardening—Arno Knapper (knapper@ku.edu & 312-9422) and Dick Shiefelbusch (843
5869)
March 2,
9, 16, & 30 at 9:00
Great Books Study Group—Mary
Boyden (843-8897)
March 9 at
1:45—David Hiebert will lead the
discussion of The Two Shores by Carlos
Fuentes, Mexico’s best known modern novelist. This selection is the second in a
series of readings from “Clashes of Culture.”
Music—Arno Knapper (knapper@ku.edu & 312-9422)
March 2,
9, 16, & 30—immediately following Coffee.
Metropolitan
Opera Radio—Al Sellen (jnalsellen@aol.com &
841-7432)
Radio
broadcasts of the Met come each Saturday at 12:30 at the home of Vic and Mary
Wallace, 1509 Massachusetts. Parking is in the church lot next door. Jim Seaver
is there with his expert knowledge.
March 5:
Samson et Dalila by Saint-Saens
March 12:
The Barber of Seville by Rossini
March 19:
Don Carlo (12:00 noon)
Opera
Study—Jim Seaver (jseaver@ku.edu &
843-4081) and Al Sellen (jnalsellen@aol.com & 841-7432)
March 4 at 1:30—Our
final opera of this year’s video presentations and studies of the last four
operas of Giacomo Puccini will be Turandot. Death carried the composer away before he could finish Turandot,
but he did complete the score for the first two acts and much of the final act
up through the death of Liu. Puccini
left sketches for the finale, and these were used by his friend Franco Alfano
to complete the opera in the version that we usually see in opera houses and on
videos or hear on records. But Arturo
Toscanini, who conducted the world premiere of Turandot at La Scala,
Milan, on 25 April 1926, ended the performance with the death of Liu. He rang down the curtain and said to the
audience, “The opera ends here because at this point the composer died.”
The libretto for Turandot was
written for Puccini by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni after Carlo Gozzi’s
dramatic fairy tale, which itself was based on an ancient Chinese fable about a
princess who executed suitors who failed to answer her riddles. Julian Budden has written that Turandot is
rightly regarded as the summit of Puccini’s achievement. The style remains true to the composer’s
nineteenth-century roots but assimilates modern elements, such as bitonality and
the use of whole-tone, pentatonic, and modal harmony. His writing for the chorus in Act I is especially interesting and
varied, and the title role is one of the supreme challenges for the dramatic
soprano voice. Some of the outstanding
Turandots have been Rosa Raisa, Eva Turner, Claudia Muzio, and Birgit
Nilsson. The Spanish tenor Miguel Fleta
created the role of Calaf in Milan.
Other famous Calafs have included Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, Franco Corelli,
and, especially for the famous “Nessun dorma” aria of Act III, Luciano
Pavarotti and Jussi Bjoerling.
Our video will come from a Turandot
performance given at the San Francisco Opera in 1994. Our Turandot will be the Hungarian soprano
Eva Marton, probably the leading Turandot of her time. The fine American tenor Michael Sylvester
will sing the role of Calaf, the unknown prince. Basso Kevin Langan will be the aged Timur, and the Italian lyric
soprano Lucia Mazzaria will sing the part of the slave girl Liu. The orchestra and chorus of the San
Francisco Opera will be directed by Donald Runnicles.
Our telecast will last
approximately two hours. There will be
an intermission at the end of the long first act, at which time coffee, tea,
and cookies will be served, and we will make a decision about what area of
operatic study we will look forward to in 2005/6.
Leave from Hillcrest
Shopping Center Parking Lot (southwest section) @
7:30 A.M.
Lunch—On your own at
Food Court, Cosmosphere—12:00–1:00
Cosmosphere: IMAX movie, "Forces
of Nature"; Dr. Goddard's Lab, tour of space museum 1:00 - 4:00
Dinner in Yoder,
Kansas—5:00-6:00
Shopping at the Kansas
Station (KS products), Yoder—6:00-7:00
Return to Lawrence
between 10:30-11:00P.M.
Cost of Trip: $46.00 per person. This includes bus, museum entrance fees, and dinner. Make checks
payable to Endacott Society. Reservation deadline: March 6.
Sign up at Wednesday coffees, or contact Ev
Swartz.
Ten O’clock Scholars AKA Wednesday Coffee/Business Meeting—Margery Lamb
(marjlamb@sbcglobal.net & 749-4647)
March 2, 9,
16, & 30
Overnight trip to Tulsa, OK April
29, 30
Trip includes: Tulsa: Gilcrease
Museum, operas (optional)—Cavaleria Rusticana, Pagliacci
Claremore: Will Rogers Museum,
Bartlesville: Woolaroc
Details will be in the April
Newsletter.
May—Train trip to St.
Louis, MO for a two-night stay. Details
will be in April newsletter.
Pre-Concert Dinner—Grant
Goodman (plim@ku.edu & 841-1066)
The
last preconcert dinner of the current season will be at 5 p.m. at the Smith
Center, Brandon Woods on April 15th. Sign up will be available at
Ten O'clock Scholars meetings beginning March 2. Also reservations
may be made with Grant Goodman at 841-1066. This dinner will precede the
performance by Jubilant Sykes at 7:30 p.m. at the Lied Center
FYI:
· ENDACOTT SOCIETY MEMBERSHIP LIST
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the Endacott Society membership list may be obtained from Bryan Greve at the KU
Alumni Association. We will no longer include the lists with newsletters.
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Questions? Contact rjsmith@ku.edu
Endacott Society Newsletter online? Late breaking Endacott Society news?
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