Genius Tales
What is it about stories that demand retelling? We are human, we like stories. We tell them to each other, …
Category Archives: Europe
Clowning Glory
On view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the moment is an exhibition entitled “Seurat’s Circus Sideshow,” a collection …
Moneylenders and Merchants
Whenever an opportunity arises to see Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, I leap at it knowing that I will probably find …
Singing Missa
When I told my beloved dissertation advisor and now emeritus professor that my chorus was preparing Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis for …
Shards of Light
Many years ago as a student in Strasbourg, France, I had many great conversations with Mme. Farès, the middle-aged cleaning …
Weeping for the World’s Outcasts
Once, a dear friend commented on something small that had been left me by my grandmother, saying, “I don’t have …
A Green Table
“And death shall have no dominion”, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas asserts, paraphrasing St. Paul and making a lyrical case …
Words into Life
The Greek god Dionysos, god of many names, known to the Romans as Bacchus, god of wine, of theatre, of …
The Comfort of Sheep
The great house Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, U.K., is the ancestral country home of the Cavendish family – the Dukes of …
Saints and Sinners
The portrayals of religious figures in the movies are usually patently contrived: the noble suffering, the shining conviction, the heroic …
