| Yesterday was amazing. I got free tickets to go | | | | declension is hard. The opera had unsurpassed |
| see the final rehearsal of the opera Lucia di | | | | music and virtuosity, but its theme was trite. No |
| Lammermoor at New York's Lincoln Center. Then, | | | | one falls in love and kills themselves like that. I |
| after my daily stay in the library's basement, I | | | | learned more from the lowbrow musical. Its all |
| went to a discussion group on Aeschylus' ancient | | | | down hill from Greek plays in terms of |
| Greek play, the Oresteia. When there I got a call | | | | philosophical depth. But the musical about the |
| and free tickets to go see A Chorus Line on | | | | common man speaks to me. One could not say |
| Broadway. Wow! | | | | progress or declension is a theme across the |
| I tried hard to think of what the common culturist | | | | ages of Western theater. |
| lesson was in these three pieces. They are very | | | | Morality was another angle I considered in my |
| different from eachother. Lucia di Lammermoor | | | | search for a culturist lesson. In the Orestia, |
| depicts an over-the-top struggle of love against | | | | Orestes, must revenge his fathers death. But his |
| an arranged marriage and includes a famous "mad | | | | father killed his sister so that the Trojan War |
| scene" before bodies populate the stage. A | | | | would go well. In avenging his father by killing his |
| Chorus Line focuses on the lives of much more | | | | mother Orestes was also trapped in a lose - lose |
| believable individuals who are struggling to get | | | | situation. A strong sense of duty motivates the |
| work in a - you guessed it - chorus line. And the | | | | characters. In the opera Lucia di Lammermoor, |
| Oresteia concerns the birth of justice in a dilemma | | | | characters rebel out of selfish love and the |
| in which someone must avenge their father's | | | | Chorus Line folk only think of their own passion |
| murder, but this means killing their mother as she | | | | when it comes to job choice. This could be seen |
| killed the father. Finding a commonality between all | | | | as a moral declension. But, then again, our being |
| of these was hard. | | | | able to do what makes sense to us is a virtue. If |
| Perhaps the culturist lesson is that the concerns | | | | there is a commonality in all of these pieces, it is |
| of these Western art pieces are increasingly | | | | people raging against their situations and trying to |
| petty. The Greek play, the Oresteia, concerns | | | | live according to truths - be they individual or duty |
| huge issues, fate, the death of the age of the | | | | centered. From a long Western perspective, the |
| Gods, the Birth of justice, male versus female | | | | individualistic passionate dancers are not less |
| bases of society. The opera had huge love, and | | | | representative than the murdering Greek's or the |
| the Chorus Line was just about average | | | | opera's characters. |
| individuals. But, saying this is a progression or a | | | | |