Category Archives: from Paul

Paul’s posts.

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 […]

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 […]

THE CHERRY ORCHARD AT THE GOODMAN: Chekhovian Homelessness

Underneath all of the copious details, Anton Chekhov’s final play The Cherry Orchard (1904) hangs on a very simple plot: Coming and going. Entering and exiting. Lyubov Ranevskaya, and her retinue, return to the family estate to save it from its many creditors. Her only plan is a miracle. The estate, famous for its cherry […]

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 […]

RED-BLOODED ERNANI OPENS LYRIC SEASON

None of Verdi’s four previous operas did as much as Ernani for his reputation. Ernani (1844) owed its popularity to the coattails of Victor Hugo’s monumental Hernani (1830). Critics who complain of Ernani’s plot devices totally misunderstand what Victor Hugo was trying to do. The play Hernani was a full-scale assault on the reigning New-Classicism […]