Category Archives: Theology

TIDEWATER STAGE’S THE CHRISTIANS: ONE HELLUVA SHOW

Few of the “educated elite” in society still believe in the reality of Satan. C.S. Lewis exposed Satan’s now completed program to spread disbelief in The Screwtape Letters[i]: I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that “devils” are predominantly comic figures in the modern […]

July 30, 2017 – 2:14 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Current Events, from Paul, History, Music, Quotations, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theater, Theology | Comments Off on TIDEWATER STAGE’S THE CHRISTIANS: ONE HELLUVA SHOW

Little Theatre of Norfolk’s NOISES OFF: A Joyous Celebration of Theater

Throughout history audiences have enjoyed stories about putting on plays or making movies. The highlight of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is always the rude mechanicals’ presentation of “the most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe.” (The more lamentable, the better. Audiences especially love badly done attempts to make theater and […]

April 2, 2017 – 7:00 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in from Paul, History, Men and Women, Theology | Comments Off on Little Theatre of Norfolk’s NOISES OFF: A Joyous Celebration of Theater

Raven Theatre’s ASSEMBLED PARTIES: A Doubter’s Christmas Carol

Christmas has been the occasion for two classic plays, Hamlet and Ibsen’s Doll’s House. Ironically, as the Christian Feast of the Nativity has become secularized, the occasion has been used by more and more contemporary playwrights to give dramatic resonance to their work. The late Harry Kondoleon’s Christmas on Mars, Rebecca Gilman’s Luna Gale, and […]

January 31, 2017 – 6:42 pm | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Current Events, from Paul, Men and Women, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theater, Theology, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Raven Theatre’s ASSEMBLED PARTIES: A Doubter’s Christmas Carol

Lyric Opera: Chicago’s Third Great NORMA

As late as 1920, American musicologists considered Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma “an improbably old-fashioned, almost hurdy-gurdy work.” But thanks to Chicago sopranos, that opera has become a standard of the American operatic canon. Written when Bellini (1801-1835) was just thirty years old, Norma had played in Chicago since the mid-nineteenth century by various visiting opera companies. […]

January 29, 2017 – 10:06 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Current Events, from Paul, History, Music, Opera, Theology, Uncategorized | Comments (1)

Lyric Opera’s DON QUICHOTTE: A Hymn to a Holy Fool

A dying Jules Massenet wrote Don Quichotte knowing the woman he loved, soprano Lucy Arbell, would play the courtesan-lady Dulcinee after his death. Rather than create his own libretto from Cervantes’ mammoth novel, Massenet used Jacques Lorrain’s bastardized and abridged verse play, Le Chevalier de la longue figure, for his libretto. La Lorrain’s short play […]

December 8, 2016 – 10:12 am | By Paul Kuritz | Posted in Books, from Paul, History, Men and Women, Music, Opera, Poetry, Quotations, The Gospel of the Kingdom, Theater, Theology | Comments Off on Lyric Opera’s DON QUICHOTTE: A Hymn to a Holy Fool