Gary Saul Morson

6 days ago | newcriterion.com | Heather Mac Donald |Gary Saul Morson |Douglas Murray |David Gress

Recent stories of note:“Vargas Llosa Stood for Freedom Against the Nationalist Tide”Tunku Varadarajan, The Wall Street Journal“I learned to read at the age of five,” said Mario Vargas Llosa upon accepting his Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010. “It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me.” The Peruvian novelist, essayist, and politician died last Sunday at the age of eighty-nine, and his learning to read doubtless stands as an important event for the rest of the world, too.

1 week ago | newcriterion.com | Gary Saul Morson |David Gress |Fernanda Eberstadt |Roger Kimball

Last night, the Philadelphia Orchestra played the Symphony No. 6 in A minor of Gustav Mahler. The venue: Carnegie Hall. The conductor: Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who is the orchestra’s music director, as well as the music director of the Metropolitan Opera. What a double-job. Maestro Nézet-Séguin has far surpassed Noah (the tennis star of the ’80s) as the world’s most celebrated Yannick. The Mahler Sixth takes about an hour and twenty minutes to play. It was the sole work on last night’s program.

1 week ago | newcriterion.com | Gary Saul Morson |David Gress |Fernanda Eberstadt |Roger Kimball

To measure the reach of postcolonial theory, consider the Metropolitan Opera’s new staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, which debuted on December 31, 2024, and runs through May 9. As the opera’s gossamer prelude rises from the orchestra, a man in a pith helmet and safari suit descends on a cable from the house’s stratospheric proscenium, shining a spotlight through the smoky atmosphere.

1 week ago | newcriterion.com | Gary Saul Morson |David Gress |Fernanda Eberstadt |Roger Kimball

In 1876, in Rome, Prince Alessandro Torlonia, a member of a distinguished family of bankers known as much for their enthusiasm for art as for their other abilities, opened the Torlonia Museum to the public. Installed in a former warehouse on the Via Colonna, the new institution displayed Prince Alessandro’s family’s immense collection of antique sculptures, mostly in marble.

1 week ago | newcriterion.com | Gary Saul Morson |David Gress |Fernanda Eberstadt |Roger Kimball

The modern state is built on the rationalist conceit that society is best organized with detailed codes, elaborate procedures, and rights for almost anything. Federal law and regulation comprises about 150 million words, telling people not only what to do, but exactly how to do it. Legal codes weren’t this dense before the 1960s. But a wave of guilt washed over society because of racism, pollution, and other harmful social practices. How could America prevent bad practices in the future?