“It’s easy to forget that the latter-day dominance of the small-cast play is a fairly recent development in theatrical history. Large casts used to be the rule, not the exception. Indeed, most of the best-known American plays of the 20th century called for performing forces that would now be seen by penny-pinching producers as insanely extravagant…”

“Given the present state of the economy, I can’t imagine that anyone on Capitol Hill sees the preservation of sound recordings as a top priority. But Congress can do one important thing that will help to save our sonic history without costing a cent: We need to straighten out America’s confused copyright laws, and we need to do it now…”

“Fire up the time machine, set the controls for New Orleans in 1907 and make your way to a rickety night spot on Perdido Street that is known to the locals as Funky Butt Hall. Look closely and you might see a child in short pants peering through a crack in the wall and listening to the band inside. The child is Louis Armstrong, and the band, a combo led by a cornet player named Buddy Bolden, is playing a brand-new style of music that sounds like a cross between ragtime and the blues. Don’t call it ‘jazz,’ though, because nobody in Funky Butt Hall will know what you’re talking about…”

“Mr. Tynan, who died in 1980, covered theater in London and New York from 1952 to 1963, and throughout that time he was known as the most spectacularly savage of critics, a stiletto-toting wit who could coin a telling phrase and make it stick. He’s been on my mind of late, for it happens that Mr. Tynan permanently retired from drama criticism exactly 50 years ago. Back then he was famous, but now he is no longer well remembered save by his surviving victims…”

“Critics as a group have been slow to admit Britten to the pantheon of top-tier composers. His unfailingly accessible, straightforwardly beautiful music, like that of Aaron Copland, his opposite number in America, is widely–if by no means universally–thought to be too ‘easy’ to be great. But there’s more to it than that. Throughout his life and to this day, Britten’s reputation has risen and fallen for reasons that have at least as much to do with his complex personality…”

“Most Americans take it for granted, as well they should, that in a democracy, the experience of going to an art museum should be made more widely accessible. But any museum that starts down the twisty road of cultural democratization can lose sight of its overarching mission…”

“I don’t want to see ‘Willy Loman, Killer of Zombies’ on Broadway any time this millennium, but I do believe that great works of art can profit from radical reinterpretations that fling conventional wisdom out the window. A classic, after all, is tough enough to stand up to the hardest possible use. In the long run, the only thing that can do lasting damage to the reputation of a masterpiece is to let contemporary audiences take its excellence for granted…”

“It’s not a knock on performers to point out that they tend not to write well about anything else. To become a first-rate actor or musician requires a ruthless single-mindedness that leaves little time for secondary pursuits…”