Class Note 1997
Issue
Jan - Feb 2018
On a glorious September weekend in Hanover I met up with Lindsey Noecker and Tony Field for Class Officers Weekend. We attended some fantastic panels, including a discussion of the new branding strategy emphasizing the College’s sense of place. We listened to some impressive students describe their class projects and heard three trustees discuss volunteer leadership and how to prepare students to be leaders. We walked around the ever-changing yet always familiar campus marveling at how young the members of the class of 2021 looked. And while Tony and I were hanging out at the Pine, we struck up a great conversation with Zach Grenier of The Good Wife and actors Tracie Thoms and Marjolaine Goldsmith, who all were starring in Theater of War’s amazing production of Antigone in Ferguson next door at the Hop.
These moments all reinforced for me how special the College is and how lucky we were to have our time on the Hanover plain. I can’t wait to see many of you at our reunion June 15-17 and look forward to making new memories.
Congratulations to Tim O’Leary on being named the next general director of the Washington National Opera. In an interview with The New York Times, Tim said he intends to make sure that his company capitalizes on being in what he called “a golden age” of new American works.
“There are more new American operas being programmed throughout the whole country, by companies large and small, than ever before,” Tim said. “Whereas 20 years ago that kind of project was regarded as something opera companies did out of a sense of duty, these are now often the sellout shows of opera seasons, and provide companies with many of their most meaningful opportunities to engage with the culture at large.”
Tim, who has led the Opera Theater of St. Louis since 2008, staged a series of world premieres of American operas, including Champion, a boxing-and-jazz themed opera by Terence Blanchard and Michael Cristofer, 27 by Ricky Ian Gordon and Royce Vavrek, and Shalimar the Clown by Jack Perla and Rajiv Joseph, based on the Salman Rushdie novel. Tim also chairs the board of Opera America, a national service organization. He will begin his new position in July.
Over on the West Coast, Catherine MacDonald Christian lives in Sacramento, California, with husband Tony and two daughters.
“Our oldest, Corinne, is a sophomore at a boarding school in Monterey, so we make as many excuses as possible to visit her there,” Catherine wrote. “My youngest, Isabelle, is in seventh grade and I homeschool her. She is an avid ballet dancer and is in the pre-professional division of the Sacramento Ballet’s school. Tony and I run our commercial construction company, Bancroft Development. Business is good. Between running a business, homeschooling a junior high schooler and keeping up with a teen at boarding school, I don’t have a whole lot of time for much else, but do spend time volunteering for Capitol Ballet’s costume department sewing new costumes for them. I guess that’s just about all the news that’s fit to print for me!”
And across the pond, cheers to Cecile Divino, who recently became a British citizen. She wrote that she got the London bug more than 20 years ago on our London history foreign study program. Cecile graduated from business school at Oxford. When we caught up on Facebook, she had been working in Manila for the Asian Development Bank on secondment from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
That’s all for now. Best wishes to everyone for a happy and healthy new year!
—Jason Casell, 10106 Balmforth Lane, Houston, TX 77096; jhcasell@gmail.com
These moments all reinforced for me how special the College is and how lucky we were to have our time on the Hanover plain. I can’t wait to see many of you at our reunion June 15-17 and look forward to making new memories.
Congratulations to Tim O’Leary on being named the next general director of the Washington National Opera. In an interview with The New York Times, Tim said he intends to make sure that his company capitalizes on being in what he called “a golden age” of new American works.
“There are more new American operas being programmed throughout the whole country, by companies large and small, than ever before,” Tim said. “Whereas 20 years ago that kind of project was regarded as something opera companies did out of a sense of duty, these are now often the sellout shows of opera seasons, and provide companies with many of their most meaningful opportunities to engage with the culture at large.”
Tim, who has led the Opera Theater of St. Louis since 2008, staged a series of world premieres of American operas, including Champion, a boxing-and-jazz themed opera by Terence Blanchard and Michael Cristofer, 27 by Ricky Ian Gordon and Royce Vavrek, and Shalimar the Clown by Jack Perla and Rajiv Joseph, based on the Salman Rushdie novel. Tim also chairs the board of Opera America, a national service organization. He will begin his new position in July.
Over on the West Coast, Catherine MacDonald Christian lives in Sacramento, California, with husband Tony and two daughters.
“Our oldest, Corinne, is a sophomore at a boarding school in Monterey, so we make as many excuses as possible to visit her there,” Catherine wrote. “My youngest, Isabelle, is in seventh grade and I homeschool her. She is an avid ballet dancer and is in the pre-professional division of the Sacramento Ballet’s school. Tony and I run our commercial construction company, Bancroft Development. Business is good. Between running a business, homeschooling a junior high schooler and keeping up with a teen at boarding school, I don’t have a whole lot of time for much else, but do spend time volunteering for Capitol Ballet’s costume department sewing new costumes for them. I guess that’s just about all the news that’s fit to print for me!”
And across the pond, cheers to Cecile Divino, who recently became a British citizen. She wrote that she got the London bug more than 20 years ago on our London history foreign study program. Cecile graduated from business school at Oxford. When we caught up on Facebook, she had been working in Manila for the Asian Development Bank on secondment from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
That’s all for now. Best wishes to everyone for a happy and healthy new year!
—Jason Casell, 10106 Balmforth Lane, Houston, TX 77096; jhcasell@gmail.com