Friday, August 12, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review a revival of Martin McDonagh’s The Lonesome West in Washington, D.C. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Now that Brian Friel has left us, who…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMSeamus Heaney reads an excerpt from The Cure at Troy, his 1990 English-language adaptation of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, on The Andrew Marr Show, originally telecast by the BBC on March 16, 2…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.” Wal…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, August 11, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I discuss the published version of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the problem of reading a play you haven’t seen. Here’s a…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AM“All the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action, all its penalties fall on the man who pauses; the traditional wisdom of those times was never weary of inculcating th…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, August 10, 2016
Leontyne Price sings Verdi’s “Pace, pace, mio Dio” (from La Forza del Destino) in a 1980 telecast, accompanied by Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic: (This is the latest in a se…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AMThe bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, August 9, 2016
From 2006: I sometimes do too much fieldwork before seeing a movie, building up a whole structure of preconceptions that I then have to trundle into the theater with me and crane my neck to …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.” Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, August 8, 2016
The Jimi Hendrix Experience plays “Purple Haze” in 1970 at the Atlanta Pop Festival: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesd…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“It is the fact, that by the constitution of society the bold, the vigorous, and the buoyant, rise and rule; and that the weak, the shrinking, and the timid, fall and serve.” Walter Bage…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, August 5, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the new Broadway revival of Cats. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats” opened in New York in 1982 and closed 18 years later…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AM“Sears, Roebuck and Co. Introduces the Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art,” a 1962 training film made by Vincent Price to explain to Sears employees how to sell fine art to their custo…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.” Edward Teller (quoted in István Hargitta…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, August 4, 2016
“We live and negotiate with the people; if their conversation be troublesome to us, if we disdain to apply ourselves to mean and vulgar souls (and the mean and vulgar are often as regular …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMWednesday, August 3, 2016
Sarah Connolly, Christopher Hogwood, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment perform “When I am laid in earth,” from Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. This production was staged b…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:15AM“Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express in…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMTuesday, August 2, 2016
From 2006: Art doesn’t have to be true to life to be good, but when a work of art is true to your life, it strikes a special chord. On occasion music has this effect on me: I can think of …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AMSALLY FIELD: “Don’t you know you can’t fight city hall?” JAMES GARNER: “You can wrestle ’em.” Harriet Frank, Jr., and Irving Ravetch, screenplay for Murphy’s Romance
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, August 1, 2016
A very rare kinescope of the NBC Opera telecast of scenes from Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd, originally telecast on October 19, 1952. The title role is sung by Theodor Uppman, who appeare…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:15AM“Much good has been shown me and much evil, and the good has never been perfect. There is always some flaw in it, some defect, some imperfection in the divine image, some fault in the ange…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMFriday, July 29, 2016
Jule Styne plays his songs and talks about his career with Hugh Downs, then performs “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” (from Gypsy, with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim). This interview was or…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.” Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, July 28, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I report and reflect on an exhibition of the “serious” paintings of N.C. Wyeth. Here’s an excerpt. * * * I can’t remember the…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AM“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” Thomas Jefferson, letter to Colonel Charles Yancey (January 6, 181…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, July 27, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review a Massachusetts production of The Pirates of Penzance. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Rejoice greatly! John Rando and Joshua Bergasse, whos…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 01:53PMThe Miles Davis Quintet plays “No Blues” on The Steve Allen Show. The other musicians are Herbie Hancock on piano, Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Though he had both esteem and admiration for the sensibility of the human race, he had little respect for their intelligence: man has always found it easier to sacrifice his life than to …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, July 26, 2016
From 2006: Grammatical pet peeve. Misplaced apostrophes. My father, God rest his soul, once commissioned a huge sign that read Season’s Greetings From The Teachout’s. I secretly atte…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“I don’t know of any thing in my book to be criticised on by honourable men. Is it on my spelling?—that’s not my trade. Is it on my grammar?—I hadn’t time to learn it, and make n…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, July 25, 2016
My mother’s parents were born right around the turn of the twentieth century. Albert Crosno, Sr., my maternal grandfather, came from Decaturville, a rural Tennessee town whose current popu…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AM 
