Category Archives: Men and Women

THE MET’S LA FILLE DU REGIMENT: ALMOST PERFECT

With seven operas by the young upstart  Italian  composer opening within a year, the French composers of Paris had had enough. Speaking for his aggrieved colleagues, Hector Berlioz wrote, Mr. Donizetti seems to treat us like a conquered country; it is a veritable invasion n. One can no longer speak of the opera houses of […]

March 4, 2019 – 10:30 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Current Events, Dance, from Paul, History, Men and Women, Music, Opera, Theater | Comments (0)

REGENT’S DEAR BRUTUS: J.M. BARRIE’S MIDDLE-AGE MEDITATION

If you could live your life over again, would you do it the same way? This question has probably crossed everyone’s mind at one time or another. The Christian Church proclaims that one has many chances through repentance to enter the process of theosis. It certainly crossed the mind of Peter Pan’s author, the Scotsman […]

March 4, 2019 – 9:37 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Art, Books, from Paul, History, Men and Women, Music, Quotations, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theater, Theology | Comments (0)

VIRGINIA OPERA OFFERS A RADIANT ELIXIR OF LOVE

I first heard about elixirs of love in 1959 when, through my transistor radio, I heard Jed Lieber’s words about that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth She’s got a pad on Thirty-Fourth and Vine Sellin’ little bottles of Love Potion Number Nine While a new idea to me at the time, the concept of a […]

February 9, 2019 – 11:25 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Current Events, from Paul, History, Men and Women, Music, Opera, Quotations, Theater | Comments (0)

The MET OPERA: CARMEN AS MORALITY PLAY

Each performance  is custom-made. Unlike film, when stage actors meet before a new audience anything is possible. As the playwright Herb Gardner noted, There is a chance each time the curtain goes up of glory and disaster, the actors and the audience will take each other somewhere, neither knows where for sure.[i] And that magical […]

February 3, 2019 – 1:01 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Books, from Paul, History, Men and Women, Music, Opera, Theater, Uncategorized | Comments (0)

ARENA STAGE’S ANYTHING GOES: CLASSIC MUSICAL FUN

In 1934 Anything Goes, the musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter opened in New York City. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, heavily revised by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse.  Their object was maximum fun, and minimum attention to the news of the day. And they succeeded brilliantly. The Times critic wrote that the […]

December 27, 2018 – 3:25 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Art, Current Events, Dance, from Paul, History, Men and Women, Music, Politics, Quotations, Theater | Comments (0)