Category Archives: Poetry

LA SCALA’S GIOVANNA D’ARCO: When an Opera is a Lie

As of 2009, ten percent of Americans thought Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.[i] Since then most people probably won’t even guess as to her identity. And where could they learn of Joan of Arc? Schools, where any hint of Christianity is outlawed? In mainline churches, where scientific rationalism filters the majesty and mystery of […]

July 11, 2018 – 1:36 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Art, from Paul, History, Music, Opera, Poetry, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theater, Theology | Comments Off on LA SCALA’S GIOVANNA D’ARCO: When an Opera is a Lie

CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH: Imagination’s Descent into Hell

 Viewed in the context of his other work, Macbeth is Shakespeare’s Descent into Hell. And since it is his Inferno, it is appropriate that the terrestrial and celestial parts of his universe should figure slightly.[i] Those words by University of Chicago Shakespearean scholar Harold Goddard summarize the production Aaron Posner and Teller have created at […]

May 23, 2018 – 2:46 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, from Paul, History, Poetry, Quotations, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theater, Theology | Comments Off on CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH: Imagination’s Descent into Hell

DYLAN IN RICHMOND

Bob Dylan’s concert in Richmond took place at the Richmond Coliseum, an edifice best described by the famous line, “What. A. Dump!” Nevertheless, the ageless Mavis Staples opened the three hour show with a feisty backup band as she reviewed some of her greatest hits and introduced a few of her new songs from her […]

November 12, 2017 – 3:42 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Current Events, from Paul, History, Music, Poetry, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theater, Theology | Comments Off on DYLAN IN RICHMOND

EUGENE ONEGIN at the Met: Netrebko Redefines Tatiana

Some fans of Alexander Pushkin’s great and iconic verse novel Eugene Onegin can’t stomach Pytor Illyich Tchaikovsky’s operatic version. Too much of the master Russian author’s brilliance is lost, they say, in the opera’s simplified libretto, written in only nine days. Pushkin’s 1833 novel is a text that “divides Russian literature into a ‘before’ and […]

April 23, 2017 – 3:06 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Books, Current Events, from Paul, History, Men and Women, Music, Opera, Poetry, Theater | Comments Off on EUGENE ONEGIN at the Met: Netrebko Redefines Tatiana

Lyric Opera’s Eugene Onegin: Tatiana’s Triumph

Like Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Pytor Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is not eponymous. The play is named, not, as Dostoyevsky famously argued, for the play’s main character, but rather for the character who sets the main character in action. The main character in Tchaikovsky’s opera is, instead, the country girl, Tatiana Larina. And Tatiana might owe her […]

March 5, 2017 – 12:26 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Books, History, Men and Women, Music, Opera, Poetry, Theater | Comments Off on Lyric Opera’s Eugene Onegin: Tatiana’s Triumph