Category Archives: Quotations

MUTI AND THE CSO RETURN

Classical music organizations have always looked for ways to expand their repertoire beyond the tried-and-true canon. New symphonies and operas have been commissioned almost from the beginning of the group’s founding. The problem is that the new works have a short life span; few, if any, ever have a life beyond their premiere. Artistic directors […]

1918 Hollywood and the Spanish Flu

    From  The LA EVENING EXPRESS 13 October 1918        

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 […]

IN THE SEASON OF PARSIFAL

The coincidence of a world-wide pandemic and the liturgical season of Lent may prompt some people, stuck at home, to consider Richard Wagner’s masterpiece, PARSIFAL. Set in a mythological world in which the land is suffering because the king is dying, a young Holy Fool, so naive that he doesn’t even know his name, arrives […]

WHY YOU SHOULD SEE SHAW’S MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION: PATERNITY

Despite the existence of DNA testing, and sites like Ancestry.com, genealogy can still offer major surprises and uproars in a person’s life. Just ask Oedipus Rex. Or Captain Adolph in Strindberg’s The Father. Or ask Bernard Shaw. The question of paternity tormented George Bernard Shaw all his life. His mother lived in a ménage a […]