Category Archives: Music

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

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 […]

September 22, 2022 – 11:10 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Art, Books, Current Events, from Paul, History, Men and Women, Music, Opera, Quotations, Theater | Comments Off on RED-BLOODED ERNANI OPENS LYRIC SEASON

Handel’s JEPHTHA: Being Right in One’s Own Eyes: The Music of the Baroque’s Electrifying Performance

The most commonly used word to describe Georg Friedrich Handel’s 1752 oratorio Jephtha is “dark”. And the word has nothing to do with the fact that the composer was going blind as he was composing. Jephtha, Handel’s last oratorio, is his most troubling masterpiece. The work contemplates the often inscrutable role of the divine in […]

September 20, 2022 – 9:38 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Current Events, from Paul, History, Men and Women, Music, Poetry, Quotations, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theater, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Handel’s JEPHTHA: Being Right in One’s Own Eyes: The Music of the Baroque’s Electrifying Performance