Product Description

Father Owen Lee is to opera what Chesterton's Father Brown was to crime detection. For 20 years Father Lee has been a beloved presence on the Metropolitan Opera's Saturday afternoon Chevron-Texaco broadcasts as an always knowledgeable guest on Opera Quiz and as an ever-insightful commentator on operatic stories, music, and themes. A classics professor in his "day job," Father Lee is the author of 14 books, mostly on opera.A Book of Hours is a departure for Father Lee: a personal memoir, cast in the form of a secular breviary, that recreates a year Father Lee spent teaching at an American college campus in Rome over a quarter century ago. The book draws together in an intricate web of refracting relationships the three great loves of Father Lee's life: opera, literature, and his life and work as a priest. A Eurail pass allowed him to visit all the great opera houses of Europe, which in turn reflected on his teaching in the classroom during the week: Homer and Virgil, Whitman and Rilke. And all of this is set in the context of a personal crisis - impending hearing loss, theological doubts, and the celibate's inevitable regret, at age forty, that he cannot share his remaining years with children of his own. In this inspiring and beautifully crafted book, Father Lee shows us how religious faith and a deeply humanistic culture need never be enemies, but rather can be a source of mutual enrichment.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #846316 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 284 pages

From the Inside Flap
"…a wonderful book which will give enormous pleasure to any person who still believes in the inherited high culture of the West…. His wonderful description of the architectural differences between the domes of the Pantheon and Borromini’s St. Yvo is as brilliant a lecture on art history as I have ever read…. His memoir is the testimony of a kind of Christian humanist who is a rarity today." –Commonweal, December 3, 2004

About the Author
M. Owen Lee, a member of the Basilian Fathers, is Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Toronto, where he recently received an Outstanding Teacher Award and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Author of books of Virgil's Aeneid and Horace's Odes, he is best-known for his books on opera: First Intermissions, Wagner's Ring, A Season of Opera, and The Operagoer's Guide. Father Owen Lee is to opera what Chesterton's Father Brown was to crime detection. For 20 years Father Lee has been a beloved presence on the Metropolitan Opera's Saturday afternoon Chevron-Texaco broadcasts as an always knowledgeable guest on Opera Quiz and as an ever-insightful commentator on operatic stories, music, and themes. A classics professor in his "day job," Father Lee is the author of 14 books, mostly on opera. A Book of Hours is a departure for Father Lee: a personal memoir, cast in the form of a secular breviary, that recreates a year Father Lee spent teaching at an American college campus in Rome over a quarter century ago. The book draws together in an intricate web of refracting relationships the three great loves of Father Lee's life: opera, literature, and his life and work as a priest. A Eurail pass allowed him to visit all the great opera houses of Europe, which in turn reflected on his teaching in the classroom during the week: Homer and Virgil, Whitman and Rilke. And all of this is set in the context of a personal crisis-impending hearing loss, theological doubts, and the celibate's inevitable regret, at age forty, that he cannot share his remaining years with children of his own. In this inspiring and beautifully crafted book, Father Lee shows us how religious faith and a deeply humanistic culture need never be enemies, but rather can be a source of mutual enrichment.

Customer Reviews

A marriage of music and spirituality
Well known to opera lovers for his insightful commentaries during the Saturday broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera, Father Owen Lee's memoir of a year teaching in Italy and travelling all over Europe to attend operas adds a remarkable depth to Father Lee's clearly multifaceted life. Combining musings about religion, faith, scholarship,music and human nature, this is a beautiful book, rich in insights and moving in many ways. Although Father Lee's faith clearly derives from his calling as a Catholic priest, his observations and insights into things spirirual and musical should not be off-putting to a person of any faith, or none at all. "I hated to turn to the last page" is quite the literary cliche, but I was genuinely sorry for this wonderful book to end. I wish there were a volume two.

Powerfully Enriching and Inspiring
In this book we follow Father Lee through a year spent in Rome in the seventies, teaching American students attending a Catholic University. He opens the eyes of his students, as he does his readers, to the power of art to enrich and inspire us. We follow him as he teachs his students about the works of Homer and Virgil, and we come to understand the freshness of these works written thousands of years ago. We follow him as he travels to the opera houses of Europe in pursuit of one of his passions - opera. The conversations he has with ordinary people he meets en route are powerful ruminations on theology and philosophy. A gay American couple he meets on a train, who are unable to come to terms with Church teaching on homosexuality, challenge his notions of religion and love. A performance of Wagner's Die Meistersinger sparks a conversation with a German couple - innkeepers - who wrestle with Germany and the Holocaust. His thoughts on the fire bombing of Dresden I found powerful and devastating especially in view of today's world situation. His thoughts on 'that most complicated of the performing arts - opera - I found refreshing. I have known Father Lee through his wonderful books on opera, but The Book of Hours gives us a much deeper look at the world around us, and the role the arts play in that world, and in the human soul. What Father Lee reminds those of us who love the arts, is that they connect us with the divine. They draw us to what is deep inside us, and what is extraordinary outside us, for in the end the arts help us touch what is immanent and what is transcendant. A must read for those with a deep appreciation for literature, art and music.