Category Archives: Books

DIRECTOR RE-WRITES FLYING DUTCHMAN

Director Terry McCabe has written brilliantly about the director’s historical obligation to a dramatic  text: “I believe the director’s job is to tell the playwright’s story as clearly and as interestingly as possible.”[i] The operas of Richard Wagner debuted in Chicago with Leonard B. Grover (1833-1926) whose company first performed a Wagnerian opera in the […]

October 5, 2023 – 11:15 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Art, Books, from Paul, History, Music, Opera, Quotations, Theater, Uncategorized | Comments Off on DIRECTOR RE-WRITES FLYING DUTCHMAN

BEETHOVEN, MUTI, AND THE GLORY OF GOD

For his final concert as Musical Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti chose Beethovan’s Missa Solemnis. He has compared  Beethoven’s Missa solemnis to “climbing Mount Everest. It is the greatest religious sermon in music. It is the Sistine Chapel of music — a work so complex that it makes every interpreter’s wrists tremble.” The Missa […]

June 26, 2023 – 9:53 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Art, Books, Current Events, from Paul, History, Music, Quotations, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theology | Comments Off on BEETHOVEN, MUTI, AND THE GLORY OF GOD

IT’S MAHLER TIME !!

In 2016, the  British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) invited 150 of the world’s leading conductors to vote for what they considered the greatest symphonies ever written. Beethoven and Brahms — not surprisingly— had two each in the top ten. But three of those places were occupied by Gustav Mahler. Chicago seems to be experiencing  the  year […]

June 11, 2023 – 11:01 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Art, Books, Current Events, from Paul, History, Music, Quotations, Theology, Uncategorized | Comments Off on IT’S MAHLER TIME !!

MERCURY THEATER CHICAGO FINDS GOLD IN BIG RIVER

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell.” Those seven words from chapter 31 of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are among the most memorable in American literature. At this point in the novel, Huck Finn has just realized the con artists, the  Duke and Dauphin, have betrayed the runaway slave Jim and sold […]

May 14, 2023 – 1:04 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Books, from Paul, History, Music, Quotations, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theater, Theology | Comments Off on MERCURY THEATER CHICAGO FINDS GOLD IN BIG RIVER

LYRIC’S FIDDLER ON THE ROOF: SWAN SONG FOR TRADITION

Fiddler on the Roof, the world-famous musical adaptation of the stories of Sholom Aleichem, opens with the glorious song, “Tradition”, which proudly announces the subject of the musical story about to unfold. The dean of American theater critics Harold Clurman explains what is meant here by “tradition”: “This tradition, which might superficially be taken to […]

September 29, 2022 – 3:14 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Books, from Paul, History, Music, Opera, Quotations, Theater, Theology | Comments Off on LYRIC’S FIDDLER ON THE ROOF: SWAN SONG FOR TRADITION