Lori Humphreys

If you love opera, you’ll love hearing Mikael Eliasen, director of the Curtis Institute of Music Voice Department and Chautauqua Music School voice teacher, explain “Opera — What Is It?” at the Chautauqua Speaks program 9:15 a.m. Thursday at the Chautauqua Women’s Club. If you hate opera, you’ll still love hearing Eliasen explain “Opera — What Is It?”

Chautauqua Institution is the jewel in the crown of the county known as Chautauqua. “Chautauqua County is a beautiful, safe, rural area; it is also poor,” said Jane Becker, who has held leadership positions in many county organizations since coming to the area 27 years ago.

It has become a national mantra, moan and, perhaps, a national illusion that civility in political discourse was the rule and now has been supplanted by ravening partisanship. Whatever the historical fact, Gina Barreca, author, lecturer, columnist and humorist, offers a thoughtful yet witty take on the “End of Civility” at the Contemporary Issues Forum 3 p.m. Saturday at the Hall of Philosophy. She is a practitioner of the theory, “If they are laughing, they are listening.”

Is it so unreasonable to experience a Chicken Little “the sky is falling” response to the current cascading changes in the international order that Americans have expected since the end of World War II? Even an informed, attentive response to news of the “Arab Spring,” the rise of China, the economic crisis in Western democracies, might include looking up to be reassured that the sky isn’t falling.

Ancient Greek mythology did not separate medicine and music. Apollo was the god of both. Dr. Allen C. Steere will present both scientific and intuitive evidence that suggests the Greeks may have been onto something at 9:15 a.m. Thursday at the Chautauqua Women’s Club. Visitors will have the opportunity to meet and hear Steere discuss the links between medicine and music at the first “Chautauqua Speaks” program of the season.

So where is the portrait of Anna Pennybacker, the iconic president of the Chautauqua Women’s Club, who last served in 1937? Is the portrait’s absence and the possibility that it may not return to its prominent position over the fireplace mantle of the Women’s Club living room a symbol of today’s members’ 21st century energy and spirit? That energy and spirit have led to a recent redo of the Women’s Club bylaws creating a board of directors with a chairwoman and a $500,000 clubhouse renovation.