Category Archives: Quotations

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

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. […]

August 14, 2022 – 6:04 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Books, Current Events, from Paul, History, Magazines, Men and Women, Music, Newspapers, Opera, Quotations, Theater, Uncategorized | Comments Off on RAVINIA OFFERS A MAGNIFICENT DON GIOVANNI

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 […]

July 18, 2022 – 11:02 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Current Events, from Paul, History, Men and Women, Newspapers, Politics, Quotations, Theater | Comments Off on CITY LIT OFFERS BEAUTIFUL, HEARTBREAKING PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD

THE CHINESE LADY: HOW NOT TO TREAT A STRANGER

In their study of human behavior, ethologists have concluded certain facts about our species. One is curiosity. “In man, curiosity remains a prominent art pf behavior throughout life/ thus we can properly be called creatures of curiosity, and our curiosity maybe interpreted as a persistent juvenile characteristic. Indeed, we seek novelty even into our old […]

June 19, 2022 – 2:31 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, from Paul, History, Quotations, Science, Television, Theater, Theology | Comments Off on THE CHINESE LADY: HOW NOT TO TREAT A STRANGER

SINGING SAVES STONE’S CAMPY LUCIA AT THE MET

  In 1964 the literary critic Susan Sontag published the definitive work “On Camp”’ in which she defined the genre as loving “the unnatural, the artificial, the exaggerated.” In art, Camp’s exaggeration proceeds from both passion and naiveté, both of which opera director Simon Stone employed in his production of Lucia di Lammermoor at the […]

May 22, 2022 – 3:46 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Acting, Art, Books, from Paul, History, Music, Opera, Quotations, Theater, Uncategorized | Comments Off on SINGING SAVES STONE’S CAMPY LUCIA AT THE MET