Monthly Archives: March 2016

LYRIC OPERA’S ROMEO AND JULIET: Swashbuckling Beauty

Charles Gounod’s opera, Romeo and Juliet,  has a long and important relationship with Chicago. When the Auditorium Theatre premiered its very first opera on December 10, 1889, Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet was the choice. The production starred Adelina Patti, the woman whom Verdi called “the finest singer who ever lived”. Ms. Patti received $3000.00 and […]

March 10, 2016 – 3:15 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Art, from Paul, History, Music, Opera, Poetry, Quotations, Theater | Comments Off on LYRIC OPERA’S ROMEO AND JULIET: Swashbuckling Beauty

SHAW’S YOU NEVER CAN TELL: Is a Father Necessary?

In an issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, Judith Stacey, a professor of sociology at New York University, and Timothy Biblarz, a demographer from the University of Southern California, consolidated the available data on the role of gender in child rearing and concluded “based strictly on the published science, one could argue that […]

March 7, 2016 – 6:26 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Books, Current Events, from Paul, History, Men and Women, Quotations, Science, Theater, Uncategorized | Comments Off on SHAW’S YOU NEVER CAN TELL: Is a Father Necessary?

Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Othello: The Dark against the Light, Prose against Poetry

What is particularly, and shamefully, interesting to us now is the fact that a black man should be acceptable, to an audience inclined to xenophobia, as a great leader of men. Othello’s colour had no connotations of enslavable inferiority. There were great negroes about in those days (or Moors – Moor being a generic term […]

March 3, 2016 – 1:28 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Current Events, from Paul, History, Men and Women, Poetry, Quotations, Theater, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Othello: The Dark against the Light, Prose against Poetry