Emma Morehart

“What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three legs in the evening?” If the average Chautauquan didn’t know the answer to this riddle, he would have been punished by the plague in Sophocles’ play “Oedipus the King.” What he also probably didn’t know was that this riddle highlights an “eternal triangle” of art, religion and politics.

Opera is part of Jay Lesenger’s soul, but his soul has been burdened lately. At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Lesenger, the general and artistic director of the Chautauqua Opera, will explain the challenge the arts are facing right now. His lecture is titled “Opera as a Spiritual Journey: My Confession.” “I also will talk about the time that we’re in right now, which is a very difficult time,” Lesenger said. “Our souls are burdened now because of the economy and because of the lack of exposure to the arts in schools. So the focus will be on how we got there and the impact of what’s going on today.”

Echoes of weeping, wailing, worrying and lamenting will fill the Amphitheater today. But don’t worry — it will just be the Massey Memorial Organ as organist Jared Jacobsen performs a somber mini-concert at 2 p.m. Jacobsen will play Franz Liszt’s “Variations on Bach’s ‘Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen,’” which translates to “Weeping, Wailing, Worrying, Lamenting,” and Olivier Messiaen’s “Dieu Parmi Nous,” or “God Among Us.”

At age 10, when most kids pretended to fight fires or dreamed of performing surgeries, Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux decided he wanted to be a dancer.

What do Pompeii, jazz, the Information Age and art have in common? Interruption. And this interruption inspires the kind of creativity seen in some of the most ambitious and successful pieces of art, said Don Kimes, the artistic director of Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution.

For one of the only times during the Chautauqua Season, the music at this Sunday’s Sacred Song service will not be the main element of the evening. Some audience members may zone in on the candles; others may notice the robes; and many in the back of the Amphitheater will take in banners that run from ceiling to floor.

From makeshift jail cells across the U.S., Al Staggs brings to life the letter that a distraught Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from his German prison in the early 1940s. “We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled — in short, from the perspective of those who suffer,” the letter states.

Emma Morehart | Staff Writer Nearly a century before the Massey Memorial Organ’s birth, César Franck, Franz Liszt and Aristide

Geffrey Kelly has made studying the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer a second career. He has written four books about the German pastor and activist, teaches about him at La Salle University and was a board member of the International Dietrich Bonhoeffer Society for 26 years. He received an honorary doctorate for his research on Bonhoeffer and has edited translations of Bonhoeffer’s writings. Bonhoeffer broke a lot of the rules of his time and taught that faith should be external and active, Kelly said. To Bonhoeffer, pursuit of justice and faith were inextricably linked. These teachings resonated with Kelly during an unexpected time in his life when his faith most needed it.

Gary Dorrien will take the Interfaith Lecture Series audience on a century-long journey this week. He will begin with the life of Reverdy Ransom as a civil rights activist in the early 1900s and will end with Benjamin E. Mays’ work with Martin Luther King Jr., stopping on the way to discuss social and religious turning points that led to the concept of the Black Social Gospel.

The Sacred Song service will take on a somber tone this Sunday as the choir and congregation sing in honor of lost loved ones. At 8 p.m. Sunday in the Amphitheater, Chautauquans can memorialize their lost friends and family by singing and signing books during the “In Remembrance” service.

One of the critical goals of government is to give people the ability to run without stumbling, said the Rev. Barry C. Black, the U.S. Senate chaplain. At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Black will explain in his lecture, “Running Without Stumbling,” that one of the government’s roles is to prepare people for “seasons of emergencies.”