Armenian News

'GLOBE TO GLOBE' SEASON CONTINUES WITH ARMENIAN 'KING JOHN' Future News - Media Planner April 23, 2012 Monday Globe Theatre 'Globe to Globe' season continues with a production of 'King John' from Armenia's Gabriel Sundukyan National Academic Theatre, performed in Armenian. First visit to the UK for the company. Season sees 37 international companies present all 37 of Shakespeare's plays in 37 different languages as part of the World Shakespeare Festival BBC is featuring the Shakespeare season in its news channel. It mentioned the love of the Armenians for Shakespeare including that ‘Shakespeare’ is a name given to children. Did you know that the most famous Armenian football player has ‘Hamlet’ as his second forename? Dates of performance are 1`6 and 17 May at the Globe Theatre. Armenia's demographic situation must be changed - deputy minister of finance news.am April 28, 2012 | 21:14 [One way of solving the pension crisis!] TSAKHKADZOR. - The current pension distribution system has deficit and it will get worse in the future, Armenian Deputy Minister of Finances Vardan Aramyan told during the seminar on pension reforms in Tsakhkadzor. Armenian nation continues to get older and the demographic problems affect also the financial system as social payments are not enough to pay pensions. The generation harmony system does not work. The young generation is not able to take care of the older generation. In order to solve those problems Armenia changes to collective system of pension payment. According to Aramyan in order to settle the financial tension Armenia must change its demography, the birth rate must increase. Hurriyet, Turkey April 27 2012 Armenian, Turkish locals in court over land rights Vercihan ZiflioÄ?lu ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News An Armenian community mounts a legal battle to retrieve their land in the eastern province of Batman, saying the land was illegaly given to others. However, the new locals of the land claim they bought the land The disputed 3,000 acres of territory covers four villages. Acar, Heybetli, BalbaÅ?ı and Ã?aÄ?ıl villages are all located in Sason district of the eastern province of Batman. An Armenian community that was forced to vacate their villages in the southeastern province of Batman 25 years ago due to politically motivated violence in the region has mounted a legal battle to retrieve disputed land. `They could not retrieve their homes and land when they decided to return back. The Directorate of Land and Cadastre has forged illegal documents on behalf of those who occupied [the properties],' lawyer Å?eyhmus Kabaday, who represents the villagers in court, told the Hürriyet Daily News. Acar village headman M. Å?irin Ekmen claimed otherwise, however, when speaking on the occupant villagers' behalf. `We, too, are in possession of documents, and we will also present them to the court. The [inhabitants of] Acar bought 1,300 acres of territory from Ä°sa Demirci, a prominent Armenian villager, in 1986. We have the documents,' Ekmen said. Some 3,000 acres of territory are at stake in the lawsuit filed by the villagers, who left their land and homes behind to emigrate to Istanbul in 1987 due to the regional violence spurred by clashes between government forces and militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), unsolved murders and the Kurdish issue. `They say they have deeds, [but] the signatures are fake, and there are no originals. They are all photocopies. My clients, on the other hand, are still in possession of their title deeds, and we have presented them to court,' lawyer Kabaday said. The next hearing is scheduled for May 4 at the cadastre court in Batman's Sason district for the lands located in the villages of Acar, Heybetli, BalbaÅ?ı and Ã?aÄ?ıl. `Rights to be retrieved' Speaking to the Daily News, a high-ranking state offcer said beneficiaries would retrieve their rights if they filed a suit. `[The Directorate of] Land and Cadastre entered places where it held no authority. We have been pursuing the matter for the past three years,' he said. `If such repression existed as claimed, then these people would not have continued living here. People emigrated due to concerns about terrorism. Now we are collecting input for the archives,' he said. Some of the Armenians who left their land currently live under Muslim identities, the official added. The damages incurred on people who abandoned their villages due to fear of terrorism will be compensated in accordance with Article 5233, which was legislated in 2004, if their claims can be verified, he said, adding that villagers from Acar had already appealed to them. `We are the aggrieved party. We [the inhabitants of] 38 households hit the road due to fear for our lives, and we could never return back. We want to return back to our village, but we are concerned about our security,' Osman (Hovsep) Demirci, one of the litigants, told the Daily News. LILI CHOOKASIAN: REVERED AMERICAN CONTRALTO WHOSE CLOSE ASSOCIATION WITH THE METROPOLITAN OPERA SPANNED NEARLY 25 YEARS AND 300 PERFORMANCES The Times April 26, 2012 Thursday London Operatic voices of truly heroic scale are seldom encountered these days. For three decades opera's most prominent exponent of mainstream contralto roles was Lili Chookasian, possessor of a lusciously dark, deep, thrillingly ample instrument. Enhanced by impeccable musicianship and a vivid personality, Chookasian's voice made her a longtime favourite at the Metropolitan Opera and an enormously acclaimed performer with major orchestras. A first-generation American, she was the daughter of a couple who had emigrated from Armenia six years before she was born in Chicago (her pride in her Armenian heritage was passionate and lifelong). Having done a good deal of singing in high school, Chookasian studied with Philip Manuel and established herself in her twenties as a concert and oratorio singer. Such an outstanding voice did not go unnoticed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with whom Chookasian made an indelible impression in Mahler's Symphony No 2 under Bruno Walter in 1955. Her marriage and growing family kept Chookasian away from opera until 1959 when, aged 38, she made her stage debut as Adalgisa in Norma at Arkansas State Opera. Shortly thereafter she began coaching with the celebrated Rosa Ponselle, who arranged for her to sing first Azucena in Il trovatore and then Amneris in Aïda at the Baltimore Opera. She made a stunning New York Philharmonic debut in 1961 singing in Prokofiev's Alexander Nevksy. Conducting was Thomas Schippers, who brought her to Italy that summer to perform the same work at the Spoleto Festival. Chookasian's first invitation to appear at the Met came at a time when she was unwilling to be parted from her family for an extended period. Once a Met engagement became more manageable for her, she made her debut in 1962 as La Cieca in La Gioconda. That success initiated an association with the company that endured for 24 seasons in 28 roles, encompassing most principal and supporting parts available to a contralto in the standard repertoire. To be expected were the mothers, grandmothers, maids and nurses (for example, in La sonnambula, Cavalleria rusticana, Hansel and Gretel, Les contes d'Hoffmann, Eugene Onegin, Boris Godunov and Jenufa). Substantially more rewarding roles included Wagner's Erda (Ring cycle), the three contralto roles in Puccini's Il Trittico, Madelon in Andrea Chenier, and Leocadia Begbick in Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Of the dramatic Verdi roles in Chookasian's stage repertoire (she was a superb interpreter of all three), she sang Ulrica 14 times with the Met, but Azucena came her way on just four occasions there and Amneris only once. She sang Death in Stravinsky's The Nightingale (Met premiere), was gloriously hearty as Auntie in Peter Grimes, and shone in such comic parts as Mistress Quickly in Falstaff and the Maharanee in Menotti's The Last Savage (US premiere).Her 290th and final Met performance (indeed, her last appearance onstage in opera) was as Gertrude in Romeo et Juliette on February 17, 1986. Chookasian was also successful at New York City Opera and the leading companies of Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans, Houston, Cincinnati, and Montreal. She returned to Baltimore Opera in 1976 as the Queen in the world premiere of Thomas Pasatieri's Ines de Castro. With a busy family life, plus her commitments with American opera companies and orchestras, it was inevitable that Europe would play a secondary role in Chookasian's activities. Besides Spoleto, she appeared at the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals, as well as the Zurich Opernhaus. Particularly meaningful for her was the opportunity to perform in Yerevan, where she was heard in Aïda and Dikran Tchouhadjian's opera Arshak II. A supremely eloquent concert artist, Chookasian sang all the music one would expect of her voice type, with particular success in the Verdi Requiem, Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, and major works of Mahler. She was heard with the leading orchestras of New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, London, and Vienna, among many others. In Chookasian's commercial discography the highlight is surely her deeply moving performance in Alexander Nevsky with Schippers and the New York Philharmonic. She sings under Leinsdorf in the Verdi Requiem and Menotti's rarely heard cantata The Death of the Bishop of Brindisi. Her interpretation of Das Lied von der Erde is documented in performances led by Susskind and Ormandy (with the latter she also recorded Beethoven's Symphony No 9). She participates in Bernstein's recordings of both Mahler's Symphony No 8 and Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music. No doubt Chookasian took particular pleasure in recording two works by the Armenian-American composer Richard Yardumian - Come Creator Spirit (subtitled "A New Mass in English") and Symphony No 2. Several "pirated" performances demonstrate the excellence of Chookasian's Wagner and Verdi roles (including a magnificent Amneris in Montreal in 1965) and her Met portrayals in Der fliegende Hollander, Eugene Onegin and The Last Savage. Having taught at Northwestern University earlier in her career, Chookasian joined the voice faculty at Yale University in 1985. Seventeen years later Yale's School of Music presented her with its highest honour, the Sanford Medal. She was made Professor Emerita in 2010. Chookasian was remarkably courageous, having triumphed over serious illness: her initial bout of breast cancer occurred in 1956, her second five years later. She was married to George Gavejian from 1941 until his death in 1987, and is survived by two sons and a daughter. Lili Chookasian, operatic contralto, was born on August 1, 1921. She died on April 10, 2012, aged 90 m.guardian.co.uk Appealing in Ealing: Ken Livingstone and Ed Miliband woo the Labour vote Ken Livingstone and Ed Miliband campaigning in Ealing Broadway. Photograph: Dave Hill Dave Hill guardian.co.uk, Sat 28 Apr 2012 18.32 BST Blogpost "Is that Boris?" cried a young female voice as Ken Livingstone, Ed Miliband and a big bunch of red balloons promenaded through the Ealing Broadway shopping centre. "No, it's not Boris," replied her friend. "Oh." I couldn't see her but I could hear her disappointment - the sound of what Ken is up against. By this time next week either a Labour Mayor Livingstone will be on the eighth floor of City Hall already implementing policies that would be good for most Londoners and London as a whole, or a Conservative Mayor Johnson will be embarking on four more years of doing no such thing. Seems like a simple choice. Opinion polls, though, suggest that too few London voters are looking at it that way and that too many see "good old Boris" and not much else - which is, of course, exactly what the Johnson campaign and its many press proxies have wanted all along. Team Boris gives every impression of protecting its boy from potentially unwelcome scrutiny in order to protect his lead: a no-show at a recent hustings, an opt out from BBC Radio London's breakfast show. Tomorrow, it's his turn to be grilled on The Sunday Politics. My strong advice is that you shouldn't hold your breath. But the polls still allow for a tight outcome. Ken's rating foot-drags behind general support for Labour in London, but mud that sticks to the Tories nationally is still soil in which his prospects grow. That's why Ed Miliband was on the trail with him this morning, not only singing his praises as the Labour candidate (that's "the Labour candidate," for pity's sake) but also dirty up David Cameron and that good friend of Boris and various mutual mediachums, Jeremy Hunt. If they're fretting about Thursday's vote, it didn't show. Ken greeted my arrival at Ealing Broadway station by offering me a freshly-fried chip and saying how much he'd enjoyed my calling him "stubborn" in a recent article. "A 'stubborn git,' actually," I pointed out. (A lot of thought went into that "git".) Ken guffawed, forgivingly. I nattered with some of his entourage - a very nice woman from Labour HQ, another from the office of Ed Balls - and then Miliband showed up, looking shiny and enthused. Together they sailed off through light drizzle accompanied by Onkar Sahota, Labour's London Assembly candidate for the GLA constituency of Ealing and Hillingdon, which a recent poll suggests Sahota has a chance of snatching from the Tory incumbent Richard Barnes. A flotilla of activists framed the politicians' progress with "Ken's Fare Deal" placards. Up ahead, apparatchiks scouted shoppers for photo-op material. This seemed in good supply, despite Ken's utter failure to be Boris. There were all sorts of stop-starts as Labour candidate and Labour leader posed and bantered with assorted Ealing citizens, ignored a passing fellow who crossly shouted, "Support the workers! Support strikes!" and talked to Sky News, PA and the Beeb about reducing London's cost of living. They went into a sweet shop - Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe to be precise - and a shoe repairer's, presumably not drawn there by the highly intoxicating smell of glue. Once back in the fresh air Ken was hailed by a man attending a sombre tree-planting ceremony at the edge of Haven Green. Would he join it, please? The gathering, I later learned, was to commemorate the Armenian Genocide, which Ealing Council has recognised thanks to efforts of Stephen Pound, the Labour MP for Ealing North. I was told that there are around 10,000 people of Armenian descent in Ealing. Ken seemed very game, and had taken several paces across the sodden grass before he was hauled back. Miliband, you see, was already in a car waiting across the way to whisk him to his next destination. Ken was meant to be beside him. "We're already 20 minutes late," an aide said, breathlessly. Ken apologised and did what he was told - not something that happens every day. He and his party's leader have a common interest in getting along and in being seen to do so. Expect further sightings of them in each others' company before 3 May.