2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
From 2004:
I'm not funny, and wish I were. Witty, yes, sometimes, and I'm pretty good at making an audience laugh when lecturing (a situation in which the prevailing standards are admittedly…
"I have never known an artist of any kind who didn't do better work when he got properly paid for it."
Virgil Thomson, The State of Music
Continue reading Almanac: Virgil Thomson on artis…
Charles Coburn appears as the mystery guest on What's My Line? John Daly is the host and the panelists are Steve Allen, Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, and Dorothy Kilgallen. This episode w…
"Journalists are plentiful everywhere and entertaining too, full of jokes and stories. Only their jokes are not very funny and their stories not quite true. Their information is always incom…
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review the PBS webcast of the 2016 Broadway revival of Noël Coward's Present Laughter. Here's an excerpt.
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PBS has telecas…
The "overture" to Mark Morris' staging of the Virgil Thomson-Gertrude Stein opera Four Saints in Three Acts, featuring the Mark Morris Dance Group and performed at the Brooklyn Academy of…
"Dancers are auto-erotic and have no conversation."
Virgil Thomson, The State of Music
Continue reading Almanac: Virgil Thomson on dancers at About Last Night.
"Taste is knowing what you don't like."
Virgil Thomson, The State of Music
Continue reading Almanac: Virgil Thomson on taste at About Last Night.
A 1965 BBC interview with the British painter Francis Bacon. This was the pilot for a TV series that did not go into production, and the interview was never broadcast. The interviewer is Jul…
"The test of whether a picture is any good"that is to say any good for you, which is the only thing that counts"is not whether it thrills you but whether you can remember it."
Maurice Grosse…
My latest Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column, in which I talk about D.A. Pennebaker's Original Cast Album: Company, is now on line. Here's an excerpt.
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Fifty years ago…
In my latest Wall Street Journal drama column, I review the Irish Repertory Theatre's webcast revival of Conor McPherson's The Weir. Here's an excerpt.
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With a handful of …
A new episode of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening …
From 2005:
The exaggerated scale of the building swamps the art it contains, and the austere décor is so rigidly uniform in its self-conscious simplicity as to make the museum seem even big…
"The approach he adopts may be a form of Impressionism, or even of Abstraction, depending on his age group and education, but it will necessarily be a familiar one. He is interested in playi…
"Glenn Gould: On the Record," a 1959 CBC documentary in which Glenn Gould is seen recording Bach's Italian Concerto at Columbia Records' New York studio:
(This is the latest in a series of …
"Reading the writings of a friend one often says, 'I can almost hear him talk.' But no one, looking at a picture, can possibly say, 'I can almost see him paint.' The art of the painter is to…
"How to Use the Dial Phone," a silent informational short made by the Bell System in 1927:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each…
"Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!"
Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
Continue reading Almanac: Saul Bellow on imaginati…
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties."
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World
Co…
Cathy Berberian performs her own Stripsody, for solo voice:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Frid…
"If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one."
John Galsworthy, Swan Song
Continue reading Almanac: John Galsworthy on the future at About Last Night.
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…
"That is why education seems, to me, so important: it actualizes that potentiality for leisure"if you like, for amateurishness, which is man's prerogative. You have noticed, I hope, that …
Dan Duryea is Jack Benny's guest star in "Death Across the Lunch Counter," a spoof of the opening scene of Robert Siodmak's The Killers. This clip is an excerpt from an episode of The …
