2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
A complete performance by the Paris Opera Ballet of Jerome Robbins' Dances at a Gathering, choreographed in 1969 and telecast in 2014. The score consists of piano pieces by Chopin, played by…
"A work in which there are theories is like an object which still has its price-tag on it." Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
From 2005: I sometimes wonder whether the rural Missouri town where I grew up is losing its individuality. I turned on the car radio yesterday morning and found myself listening to "Sympathy…
"Taste ripens at the expense of happiness." Jules Renard, journal entry (January 1908)
When Peggy Crosno Presson, my late mother's youngest sister, died in March, the members of the Crosno family who made their way to southeast Missouri for her funeral all said the same thing,…
The opening scene of George Schaefer's TV adaptation of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, starring Hal Holbrook as the Stage Manager. It was originally telecast by NBC on May 30, 1977: (This is th…
"But Laura laid awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the f…
In today's Wall Street Journal I report on three shows currently being performed at Ontario's Shaw Festival, The Twelve-Pound Look, Sweet Charity, and You Never Can Tell. Here's an excerpt. …
The Teddy Wilson Trio plays "Honeysuckle Rose" on TV in 1963. The performance was telecast from Chicago's Civic Opera House in 1963. The bassist is Jim Atlas and the drummer is Jo Jones: (Th…
"When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before." Clifton Fadiman, "War and Peace, Fifteen Years After"
This morning I fly from New York to St. Louis, where I'll pick up a rental car and meet a friend for lunch, then drive south from there to Smalltown, U.S.A. My brother and his wife are hosti…
' I recently read a very funny piece about tiny houses in which the author speculated that the ever-so-trendy residents of these miniaturized abodes might not be quite as content with their …
"What was once thought can never be unthought." Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Physicists (trans. James Kirkup)
The Miles Davis Quintet performs "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" at Rome's Teatro Sistina in 1969. The other players are Wayne Shorter on saxophone, Chick Corea on electric piano, Dave Holland …
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." Ralph Waldo Emerson, journal entry, May 1849
From 2005: Sometimes I find myself hungering for solitude, and there are occasions when I'm almost painfully grateful to spend a night with my prints, my CDs, my iBook, and my trusty TV, wat…
"There was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well." F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
On Friday I drove from Connecticut to Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, home of the Shaw Festival, about which I'll be writing in Friday's Wall Street Journal. I made the seven-hour trip by myse…
The Louvin Brothers sing "Hoping That You're Hoping" on TV in 1956: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)
"When it comes to regret, everyone's a winner! It's the jackpot you are guaranteed to win." Geoff Dyer, "Over and Out"
In today's Wall Street Journal I review a New Hampshire revival of A Garden Fête, one of the eight plays from Alan Ayckbourn's Intimate Exchanges cycle, and the Lincoln Center Theater pre…
And what color should he be? That's the subject, more or less, of my "Sightings" column in today's Wall Street Journal. Here's an excerpt. * * * In this country, Steven Berkoff is mostly kno…
An excerpt from Abe Lincoln in Illinois, starring Raymond Massey as Abraham Lincoln. The film, released in 1940, was directed by John Cromwell and adapted by Robert E. Sherwood from his orig…
I've been reading All My Yesterdays, Edward G. Robinson's posthumously published 1973 autobiography. Contrary to his celebrated tough-guy screen persona, Robinson was an exceedingly literate…
"It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men …
