Category Archives: Newspapers

RAVINIA OFFERS A MAGNIFICENT DON GIOVANNI

When opera arrived in Chicago, Mozart’s masterpiece Don Giovanni lagged behind in public approval. The Chicago Tribune reports that in 1867 “Don Giovanni has literally fought its way into public favor here. When first produced it attracted only musicians who recognized its intrinsic worth. But year after year Don Giovanni audiences grow larger and larger. […]

CITY LIT OFFERS BEAUTIFUL, HEARTBREAKING PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD

In 1904 the Great Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw used a character in his new play John Bull’s Other Island to comment on his fellow Irishmen’s character: Oh, the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart scalding, never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming! [Savagely] No debauchery that ever coarsened and brutalized an Englishman can take the […]

1918 Hollywood and the Spanish Flu

    From  The LA EVENING EXPRESS 13 October 1918        

VIRGINIA STAGE COMPANY: ALWAYS… PATSY CLINE :THE TROUBADOUR AS HERO

The March 7, 1963 headlines blazoned the news across the front page of the Los Angeles Times: Three ‘Grand Old Opry’ Stars Die in Air Crash. Bodies of Patsy Cline, Hankshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas Found on Tennessee Hill. And it happened just four years after another plane crash took the lives of Buddy Holly, […]

The Goodman Theatre’s Wonderful Town: A Wonderful Show

Occasionally a production arrives with such startling imagination, and with performances overflowing with such zest and talent, that a viewer is at a loss for words. The production I am referring to is Mary Zimmerman’s Wonderful Town at the Goodman Theatre. The 1950s musical is based on the post-World War II play My Sister Eileen […]