Month: October 2015

Edward F. Gerber, president of the Westport Historical Society, will host a walking tour of the Kings Highway North Historic District on Saturday, Oct. 3 from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. The tour will be an opportunity for participants to learn about one of the town’s oldest settled areas, some homes of which date to the mid-1700s.

“I want to talk about the fact that Kings Highway is a historic district and what that means,” said Gerber. “I hope to get onto the grounds of at least one house and have the owners talk about renovations they are doing.

Gerber said he will talk about the style of the houses and the fact that, although they were built from the early 1700s to the mid-1900s, “you can’t tell the later houses from the older ones. The architects did a good job of blending old and new.”

Kings Highway North was established as a local historic district in 1972 and named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. It encompasses 106 “contributing buildings” – structures that add to the district’s historical qualities – and four historic sites. Most of the contributing buildings are homes in the Colonial style. The historic sites include a small triangular green at the intersection of Old Hill Road and Kings Highway North that was used as a military drill ground, the adjoining Christ and Holy Trinity and Church of the Assumption cemeteries across Kings Highway from Old Hill Road, and an earlier graveyard, laid out in 1740, at the northwest corner of Kings Highway North and Wilton Road.
Originally, Kings Highway North was part of a postal road laid out between New York and Boston in 1762. Unlike the Post Road, which was built later, it followed a circuitous route through town, crossing the Saugatuck River over an old wood bridge just upstream from the present one.

According to the filing information for the district’s National Register of Historic Places certification, “The two earliest houses in the district are the c. 1730 Lt. John Taylor House and the 1736 Daniel Freelove Nash House.” The Taylor house was destroyed by fire in 1935 and replaced by a replica on the original foundation. It was the home of film and stage actor Arthur Kennedy during the 1950s and served as the model for the home of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo when the “I Love Lucy” television show moved to Westport for its final season.
Gerber will be accompanied on the tour by Edward Hynes, a specialist on the history of Westport during the American Revolution. Hynes will discuss the planned ambush by Continental troops under Benedict Arnold to fire cannons from the high ground on Old Hill down on British soldiers returning from a raid on Danbury to prevent them from crossing the river on the bridge below. But the British outsmarted the Colonials and crossed upriver near the site of present Ford Road.

“Kings Highway North Walking Tour,” Saturday, Oct. 3, 3 to 4 p.m. Meet at the cemeteries across from the foot of Old Hill Road; park along Kings Highway North. There is a $10 donation. Westport Historical Society, 25 Avery Place, across from Town Hall. For more information about the WHS, call (203) 222-1424 or go to westporthistory.org.

The Warner Theatre has announced its 2015-16 Met Opera: Live in HD Season, featuring 10 operas, 5 new to the series, streaming live from the Met. The Met Opera: Live in HD marks its tenth season this year. In October the Warner is hosting three amazing performances. Tickets are Single ticket price $27, Senior ticket price $25, Student ticket price $20 day of with ID and Child ticket price $16.

On October 3 at 12:55 Verdi’s IL Trovatore will be featured with Soprano Anna Netrebko’s dramatic and vocal skills are on full display in her next new role at the Met—Leonora, the Verdi heroine who sacrifices her own life for the love of the gypsy troubadour. Tenor Yonghoon Lee sings the ill-fated Manrico, baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky is his rival, and mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick is the mysterious gypsy with the troubled past. Marco Armiliato conducts Sir David McVicar’s Goya-inspired production. Approx. Runtime: 3:10.

On October 17 at 12:55 p.m., there will be a new production of Verdi’s Otello. Verdi’s masterfulOtello matches Shakespeare’s play in tragic intensity. Director Bartlett Sher probes the Moor’s dramatic downfall with an outstanding cast: tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko plays the doomed Otello; new soprano star Sonya Yoncheva sings Desdemona, Otello’s innocent wife and victim; and baritone Þeljko Luèiã plays the evil Iago, who masterminds Otello’s demise. Dynamic maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts. Approx. Runtime: 3:30.

To round out the month of October, on October 31 at 12:00 p.m. Wagner’s Tannhauser will be performed. ames Levine conducts Wagner’s early masterpiece in its first return to the Met stage in more than a decade. Today’s leading Wagnerian tenor Johan Botha takes on the daunting title role, opposite soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek as Elisabeth, adding another Wagner heroine to her Met repertoire after her acclaimed Sieglinde in the Ring a few seasons ago. On the heels of his recent triumph in Parsifal, baritone Peter Mattei sings Wolfram, and mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung is the love goddess, Venus. Approx. Runtime: 4:35.

For additional performances through 2016, please visit the Warner Theater’s website http://www.warnertheatre.org. For more event information www.litchfieldhills.com