Latest Breaking News On - Southold methodist church - Page 1 : comparemela.com
CAST widens social-safety net in the North Fork community
newsday.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newsday.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
It s a perfect fit for us, says exec director of planned permanent home of Southold CAST
newsday.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newsday.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Last August, CAST hoped to move from its small headquarters on Front Street in Greenport to the former Greenport United Methodist Church around the corner on Main Street in the village.
CAST needed the space and room to grow, as the services it provides from counseling to a busy food pantry had grown enormously during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the move was not to be, as opposition from neighbors of the former church argued that CAST’s mission helping those who need help did not fit in their residential neighborhood.
A CAST statement put it bluntly: “As a small, nonprofit organization, CAST does not have the resources to challenge the immediate neighborhood’s litigious, vocal and completely unjustified opposition expressed to the Village Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals, which made it clear that CAST was unwelcome there.”
Anne-Julia Audray at the front of the opera house, where the church altar once stood. (Credit: Steve Wick)
In the fall of 2016, when longtime opera singer Anne-Julia Audray and her husband purchased the former Southold Methodist Church, her dreams for the future of the building were very ambitious.
She envisioned master classes in singing, piano and violin, along with yearly concerts and the staging of operas, such as Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” an opera she knows well, having sung the “Queen of the Night” aria many times at opera houses around the world.
Seated at a long table in a side room of the former church on a recent afternoon, the soft light streaming through south-facing windows, her voice rises and falls as she sings a well-known part of the aria, which has been described as one of the most challenging in all of opera.