2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
From 2011:
Directing is mainly listening. The director's first job is to ensure that the actor speaks the text in such a way as to make it intelligible to members of the audience who have no…
William Walton talks about his life and work and is seen conducting his own music:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday,…
"We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?"
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Li…
"There are some bad qualities which make great talents."
Rochefoucauld, Maxims
Continue reading Almanac: Rochefoucauld on talent at About Last Night.
Louis Armstrong and the All Stars perform "Basin Street Blues" on The Bell Telephone Hour. This episode was originally telecast by NBC on February 2, 1964:
(This is the latest in a serie…
I wait for you in the harshest desert
and next to the flowering lemon tree,
in every place where there is life,
where spring is being born,
my love, I wait for you.
Pablo Neruda, "Letter on …
A year ago today, my beloved Hilary was in an intensive-care unit at New York-Presbyterian, fighting for her life as she awaited a double-lung transplant. She had no idea that worse awaited …
In today's Wall Street Journal I write about the Stephen Joseph Theatre's webcast of a radio play written and performed by Alan Ayckbourn. Here's an excerpt.
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Alan Ayckbou…
The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
Philip Larkin, "An Arundel Tomb"
Contin…
I will make you always remember this place, this day, and me.
Terence, "Eunuchus"
Continue reading Almanac: Terence on memory at About Last Night.
Louis Armstrong and his big band perform "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues," by Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen, in 1933:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos tha…
From 2004:
I haven't taken part in many weddings in my life, and none at all in recent years, so when my friend Laura asked me to read the Eighty-Fourth Psalm at her wedding last Saturday, I…
I shall remember while the light lives yet
And in the night time I shall not forget.
Algernon Charles Swinburne, "Erotion"
Continue reading Almanac: Swinburne on memory at About Last Night.
Cab Calloway and his big band perform "Blues in the Night," by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space …
And when the stream
Which overflowed the soul was passed away,
A consciousness remained that it had left,
Deposited upon the silent shore
Of memory, images and precious thoughts,
That shall …
In today's Wall Street Journal I review webcast versions of Meet Me in St. Louis and An Iliad, plus a video concert by Melissa Errico. Here's an excerpt.
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New York's Irish…
Francis Grier and the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, perform Benjamin Britten's A Ceremony of Carols on TV in 1942. The harpist is Frances Kelly:
(This is the latest in a s…
Sweet hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head.
John Keats, "To Hope"
Continue reading Almanac: Keats on hope at About Last Night.
Satchmo at the Waldorf, my one-man play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced numerous times from coast to coast since its Florida premiere in 2011. I've seen eight stagings, two of which…
I loved the family Christmases of my youth and awaited them eagerly each year. In adulthood, alas, the holiday season became for me a time of increasingly fraught memories. The first of thes…
"It is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction."
Samuel Johns…
In my latest Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column, I talk about how good plays get turned into bad movies"and who's to blame. Here's an excerpt.
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The universal cri…
Louis Armstrong recites Clement Moore's "The Night Before Christmas."Â This was Armstrong's last commercial recording. He made it at his home in Queens on February 26, 1971, five months be…
"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Continue reading Almanac: Dickens on the Christmas spirit at About Last Night.
From 2011:
Yesterday's reminiscence of the first movie I ever saw in a theater has put me in a nostalgic mood, so with the help of Wikipedia, I've compiled a list of interesting things…
