Books

'A Revealing Window'

For a time, a great collaboration lit up the musical stage

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SPEAKING VOLUMES I wonder whether the great mass of people who have seen one version or another of Fiddler on the Roof since it premiered on Broadway in 1964 would know, if asked, who wrote the work. Fiddler was and continues to be one of the most popular shows in theater history, and is performed every season -- if not...

Books

He Had Plenty of Something

George Gershwin was a natural wonder whose talent was turning out masterpieces

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Robert Leiter

SPEAKING VOLUMES I remember once sitting at the bar of a trendy Center City restaurant some time in the late-'80s and overhearing the couple next to me talking about the music being quietly piped into the place. At one point, the woman asked her companion if he knew the name of the song that was playing; he shrugged his shoulders...

Books

Unassuming, Yet Ardent Art

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Robert Leiter

SPEAKIING VOLUMES I can pinpoint with great accuracy the moment I fell in love with the photography of André Kertész, and that's because it was predicated on a misunderstanding. It happened in the Eighth Street Bookshop, one of Manhattan's legendary locales. It's long-gone now, its passing much lamented by those of us lucky enough to have lived in Greenwich Village...

Books

A Legend of Sorts

A critic argues that Prague has been "rewritten" through the ages

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Robert Leiter

SPEAKING VOLUMES Scholar Alfred Thomas is very clear about his intentions in his new book Prague Palimpsest: Writing, Memory, and the City , recently published by Chicago University Press; and these intentions have much to do with some of the more trendy currents in academic literary criticism. He tells us in his introductory remarks that he did not want to...

Books

Lenny, Then and Now

By:

Robert Leiter

SPEAKING VOLUMES Like most teenagers, I was distressingly opinionated and unwilling to bend when it came to my judgments concerning most artistic matters. For example, I was particularly sniffy when it came to the accomplishments -- or not -- of Leonard Bernstein. It didn't matter whether I was discussing his music (classical or otherwise) or his conducting. To a young...