World News for Students of English

20-03-2017 15:00

A violin called the Ames Stradivarius, is one of about 550 violins to exist by Antonin Stradivari. He is the world’s renowned violin maker. He made the violin in 1734, and it is probably worth millions of dollars.

The violin was stolen in 1980 from musician Roman Totenberg. The presumed thief was a journeyman violinist named Philip Johnson. Decades later, he showed his ex-wife a locked violin case. In 2015, she took the violin for an appraisal and learned what it was. The Totenberg family received the violin back.

The violin was in good shape, but it had been repaired unusually because Philip could not have taken it to a professional, as he might have been caught. The family started a meticulous restoration that took over a year.

Mira Wang, who came to the US from China over 30 years ago to study under Totenberg, played the violin in New York City on March 13th.

Difficult words: presumed (people think that this person did something), journeyman (someone studying to be a professional), appraisal (the action of finding out how much something costs), meticulous (carefully and slowly done).

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