Entertainment news

Cortland native wins opera awards

PALM BEACH, FLA.

Michael Young of Cortland won first place in the junior division of the Palm Beach Opera vocal competition April 25. Young, the son of Ken and Marty Young of Cortland, is a 2005 graduate of Lakeview High School, where he was active in the band, choir and drama departments. He studied voice with Wade Raridon, retired vocal professor of the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University.

Young is a first-year graduate student majoring in vocal performance at the Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, where he recently won the Artman/Straud award of full tuition and a cash stipend. In the spring of 2009, he received the Seybold-Russell award, including a full scholarship and a cash stipend.

He is performing his third season with the Cincinnati Opera this spring and is performing the role of George in Carlisle Floyd’s “Of Mice and Men” in CCM’s Corbett Theatre.

Film and session on Katyn massacre

YOUNGSTOWN

PolishYoungstown, in collaboration with Youngstown State University’s history department, will host an event on the Katyn Forest slaughter at 6:30 p.m. next Wednesday in the auditorium of Debartolo Hall (Room 132) on the YSU campus. Brian Bonhomme, associate professor of Russian and Soviet history, will present an information session on the incident followed by a screening of Andrzej Wajda’s Academy Award-nominated film “Katyn.” The event is free and open to the public.

About 22,000 Polish officers and intellectuals were slaughtered in the forest by Joseph Stalin’s Soviet secret police in 1940. Nazi Germany discovered the mass graves in 1943, but the Soviet Union did not admit the crime until 1980.

Discount tickets to water park

AURORA

Spring Fling tickets to Geauga Lake Wildwater Kingdom water park are available at wildwaterfun.com through May 31 for $19.99, a savings of more than $7 per ticket. The tickets are good any day the park is open in June, but they must be purchased in May. Tickets for juniors, age 3 and older, under 48 inches tall in bare feet, and seniors, age 62 and older, are $12.99.

For more information, call (330) 562-8303.