Category Archives: Poetry

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

BOB DYLAN CONCERT: A “GHOSTLY APPEARANCE”

Since  it opened its doors in 1889 Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre has heard the world’s  great voices, in words, in music, and in both. On Wednesday, the eighty year old  Nobel Prize-winning Bob Dylan offered an inspired  concert which placed him in that pantheon of voices. Dylan opened the concert with 1971’s “Watching the River Flow”, […]

November 5, 2021 – 7:19 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Art, Current Events, from Paul, Music, Poetry, Quotations, Theater, Theology | Comments Off on BOB DYLAN CONCERT: A “GHOSTLY APPEARANCE”

MODEST MUSSORGSKY HAS HIS DAY: BORIS GODUNOV DONE HIS WAY

Exactly one hundred and fifty years since Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov was rejected for performance by Russia’s Mariinsky Theatre his version of his opera is staged and transmitted live to hundreds of thousands of spectators around the world. Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) came from a more or less peasant family in Russia. That fact, plus his […]

October 10, 2021 – 3:39 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Current Events, from Paul, History, Music, Opera, Poetry, Quotations, Theater | Comments Off on MODEST MUSSORGSKY HAS HIS DAY: BORIS GODUNOV DONE HIS WAY

NEW WEBSITE: THE S YMBOLIC WORLD- Chesterton for the 21st Century

                  G.K. Chesterton called them  fairy tales. They inspired C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. SOME solemn and superficial people (for nearly all very superficial people are solemn) have declared that the fairy-tales are immoral; they base this upon some accidental circumstances or regrettable incidents in the war […]

May 28, 2020 – 10:42 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Art, Books, Current Events, from Paul, History, Media, Men and Women, Movies, Music, Opera, Poetry, Quotations, Science, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theater, Theology, Uncategorized, Web Sites | Comments Off on NEW WEBSITE: THE S YMBOLIC WORLD- Chesterton for the 21st Century

THE MET’S AKHNATEN: A HYMN TO THE TRUE LIGHT

When Philip Glass’ Akhnaten first appeared in 1984, the New York Daily News was moved to label Mr. Glass “the Ronald Reagan of composers. This time around,  no one is thinking of Ronald Reagan after experiencing the Glass/Kamensek/McDermott/Pollard/Pay  production at the Metropolitan Opera. Instead, the words ”breathtaking”, “hypnotic”, “gorgeous”, “luscious”, “overwhelming”, and “beautiful,” are most […]

November 24, 2019 – 6:00 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Art, Books, from Paul, History, Music, Opera, Poetry, Quotations, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theater, Theology | Comments Off on THE MET’S AKHNATEN: A HYMN TO THE TRUE LIGHT