Monthly Archives: November 2015

Lyric Opera’s The Merry Widow: ENCHANTMENT

Just about midway through Slovak composer Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow, the heroine, Hannah Glawari, sings a folk tale which not only reveals her strategy for winning the mating game she’s playing with old beau Count Danilo Danilovich, but also discloses how this beloved chestnut of the musical theater can continue to exert its great […]

November 26, 2015 – 12:44 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in from Paul, History, Men and Women, Music, Opera, Quotations, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theater, Theology, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Lyric Opera’s The Merry Widow: ENCHANTMENT

SHAW CHICAGO: PRIVATE LIVES 2.0

After thoroughly enjoying the first performance of Noel Coward’s Private Lives in 1930, critic Ivor Brown predicted, “within a few years’ the student of drama will be sitting in complete bewilderment before the text of Private Lives, wondering what on earth these fellows in 1930 saw in so flimsy a trifle”. It took more than […]

November 24, 2015 – 11:43 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Current Events, from Paul, History, Men and Women, Quotations, Theater, Uncategorized | Comments Off on SHAW CHICAGO: PRIVATE LIVES 2.0

BURNING BLUEBEARD: Tidings of Great Joy

Question: What do you get when you mix the macabre folk tale of a serial killer husband, the greatest theater fire in history, and Christmas? Answer: One of the most profound and moving theatrical events you are likely ever to see: Burning Bluebeard. Since the late eighteenth century, English theaters had been offering a Christmas […]

November 21, 2015 – 1:31 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in from Paul, History, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theater, Theology | Comments Off on BURNING BLUEBEARD: Tidings of Great Joy

Lyric Opera’s WOZZECK: Apocalypse Now

Alban Berg’s Wozzeck is the Guernica of the opera world -apocalyptic, boldly declaring a new way of representation, and resistant to simple interpretation. While some viewers called Guernica “a hodgepodge of body parts that any four-year-old could have painted”, and the dream of a madman, others championed it as a landmark in art history. Berg […]

November 12, 2015 – 3:37 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in from Paul, History, Men and Women, Music, Opera, Quotations, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theater, Theology, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Lyric Opera’s WOZZECK: Apocalypse Now

HERSHEY FELDER AS IRVING BERLIN: “Land that I Love” / Show That You’ll Love

We first saw Hershey Felder in Maestro at the Cleveland Playhouse, where he portrayed Leonard Bernstein. His one man tour de force was one of the most profound and moving theatrical events we  had ever seen. Leonard Bernstein was one of America’s most educated composers, having studied with the great classical minds of the twentieth […]

November 1, 2015 – 4:58 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in from Paul, History, Music, Quotations | Comments Off on HERSHEY FELDER AS IRVING BERLIN: “Land that I Love” / Show That You’ll Love