Talk:Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights

Using this to store material to incorporate later...
DionysosProteus 00:35, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

"Like many artists in the early decades of this century," Bonnie Marranca wrote in 1994, "she used light as theme, theology, technology."

Adorno and Horkheimer write: "The dutiful child of modern civilization is possessed by a fear of departing from the facts which, in the very act of perception, the dominant conventions of science, commerce, and politics--cliché-like--have already molded; his anxiety is none other than the fear of social deviation. The same conventions define the notion of linguistic and conceptual clarity which the art, literature and philosophy of the present have to satisfy. Since that notion declares any negative treatment of the facts or of the dominant forms of thought to be obscurantist formalism or--preferably--alien, and therefore taboo, it condemns the spirit to increasing darkness. . . . False clarity is only another name for myth; and myth has always been obscure and enlightening at one and the same time: always using the devices of familiarity and straightforward dismissal to avoid the labor of conceptualization." (Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment [1944], xiv)

[M]yth is already enlightenment; and enlightenment reverts to mythology. (xvi)

The thing one gradually comes to find out is that one has no identity that is when one is in the act of doing anything. Identity is recognition, you know who you are because you and others remember anything about yourself but essentially you are not that when you are doing anything. I am I because my little dog knows me but creatively speaking the little dog knowing that you are you and your recognizing that he knows, that is what destroys creation. That is what makes school. (How to Write)

Categorization under Operas
This is an opera, and should be categorized as such. It is published as an opera in Stein's Last Operas and Plays, is commonly referred to as an opera in all the critical literature (see article for a start), and I remind you of the Oxford English Dictionary definition of the word 'opera':
 * "opera: a dramatic musical work in one or more acts, in which singing forms an essential part [...]; a libretto or musical score for such a work."

DionysosProteus 18:50, 24 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Did Stein compose music? If not, then she didn't write operas. If she only wrote the words she was a librettist. It's a simple, universally accepted distinction. -- Kleinzach 17:13, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Like I say, consult a dictionary. Ignorance isn't bliss for other people. DionysosProteus 18:12, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

list of settings
It would be very useful to have a list of settings of this libretto. Two have been mentioned in the discussion triggered by the question as to libretto or opera: Meyer Kupferman (1956); David Ahlstrom (1980). No source has been given for them, and no performance history.75.209.117.94 (talk) 18:45, 13 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the mention of David Ahlstrom's setting. I am one of three people who share the rights to the late Dr Ahlstrom's music, and can give anyone who is interested a little bit of of information about it, including a fairly recent performance at San Francisco City College.  However, I don't know whether any of this is documented, online or elsewhere (whether there are reviews, for example), so I don't know whether it will be of any use on Wikipedia.  But I'm happy to satisfy anyone's curiosity, to the extent that I can.  Dudley Brooks (talk) 17:48, 11 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Ahlstrom's setting is attested to in Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians in his entry: https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/ahlstrom-david — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.192.115.98 (talk) 22:22, 2 April 2019 (UTC)