We still have openings in these upcoming classes. Please join us at the Bethesda Chevy Chase Regional Services Center for these Spring catalog classes. You can view our catalog and register online at www.liveandlearnbethesda.org call us at 301-740-6150, or email us at info@liveandlearnbethesda.org
 

As Verdi's reputation as Italy's leading composer expands, his years in Paris also contribute to his rising stature as one of the world's major composers. It is during the period ranging from his Les vepres siciliennes (1855), premiered at the Opera in Paris,  to the new production of Macbeth (1865) also for Paris, that Verdi was able to more fully embrace, new concepts of orchestration and modern staging techniques as experienced in the French capital. It is during this period that Verdi's immense sense of universality begins to fully develop, especially in the operas Un ballo in maschera and La forza del destino: two operas perhaps more "Shakespearean" than the actual operas drawn from Shakespeare. It is also during this period that Verdi begins to develop his operatic craft on the grandest of scales. Also, Simon Boccanegra (1857) proves to be a harbinger of the spectacular collaboration that will develop between Verdi and the librettist Arrigo Boito.

   

Dr. Harry N. Dunstan, Founding Artistic Director, The American Center For Puccini Studies

Monday          10:30 AM to 12:00 PM   June 15         

1 Session       $20                                  Class 641

 

Created in response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country village in northern Spain, by German and Italian warplanes during the Spanish Civil War, Picasso's Guernica was his first politically-charged painting. Dada was an art movement born out of negative reaction to the horrors of World War I. These are examples of using visual art as a means of protest. This class will explore how artists throughout history have used visual imagery to raise attention for political and cultural issues.

 

Ann Wiker, Artist, Art Historian and Educator

Wednesday    10:30 AM to 12:00 PM      June 17 

1 Session       $15                                     Class 588

What we know as the violin surfaced in the mid-16th century. Virtually unchanged, it's been an icon of globalization ever since. Over almost five centuries it has followed money and power from French queens to Russian oligarchs; adapted itself to Beethoven quartets, Irish fiddlers, Mexican mariachis, klezmer, jazz and hard rock; sold over the counter at Taoist temples for a few dollars, and at online auction for nearly $16 million. East European Jews, Japan, Korea and China have used it to connect with the modern world.   Moslems from Morocco to Indonesia have generally ignored, avoided and occasionally destroyed it.  Jefferson, Einstein, Mussolini and Sherlock Holmes played it for fun.  Its history is essentially a history of the world since Columbus and Shakespeare.  It is hard to think of any other product, tool or artifact from the moldboard plow to the iPhone that offers more to think and talk about. 

 

David Schoenbaum, Author

Thursday        10:30 AM to 12:00 PM      June 18 

1 Session       $15                                    Class 633 

The Moscow Purge Trials or Moscow Show Trials include four key trials that were held during 1937-1938.  The men on trial included all the members of Lenin's Politbureau, except Stalin himself.  Trotsky, though absent, was the chief defendant in these proceedings.  They were all accused of working, from the earliest days of the Russian Revolution, for the espionage services of Britain, France, Japan, and Germany, and of making secret agreements with agents of Hitler and the Mikado to cede vast slices of Soviet territory to imperialist Germany and Japan.  The defendants in Moscow abjectly confessed to their guilt; Trotsky alone did not. The trials were followed by a frightful purge of people from every walk of Soviet life.  

  

Arnold Leibowitz, Attorney, Author

Thursday        1:00 PM to 2:30 PM          June 18 

1 Session       $15                                     Class 634