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1 month ago | 
theamericanscholar.org | Sarah Ruden |Elaine Pagels
Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus by Elaine Pagels; Doubleday, 336 pp., $30Elaine Pagels is the great popularizer of early Christian history. In books such as The Gnostic Gospels (1979), The Origin of Satan (1995), and Revelations (2012), she has documented both long-repressed and still-influential strains of belief, and sometimes explored in personal terms the draws of religion and spirituality.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
newcriterion.com | David Yezzi |Eva Resnikova |Karen Wilkin |Sarah Ruden
Fiction: Lawrence Venuti and Michael Wood on Dino Buzzati’s The Bewitched Bourgeois, at McNally Jackson Books at the Seaport (January 16): In the fall of 2023, our fiction critic, Andrew Stuttaford, commended to readers a new translation of Dino Buzatti’s Il deserto dei Tartari (1940), now issued as The Stronghold—a shadowy, suggestive novel about life in a frontier garrison that may have been “[a]n oblique response to Kafka’s The Castle.” That volume’s translator, Lawrence Venuti, and...
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
newcriterion.com | David Yezzi |Eva Resnikova |Sarah Ruden |Karen Wilkin
It’s often said that an immortal monkey, sitting at a typewriter with no deadline and jabbing at random, will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. For a human being who speaks English, this ought to take somewhat less than forever. An Elizabethan or Jacobean playwright, in turn, is natively proficient in early modern English and knows the work, and possibly the man, well. He may have cowritten a play or two with Shakespeare, and some of the Bard’s stuff, he feels, is really his.
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
newcriterion.com | David Yezzi |Eva Resnikova |Sarah Ruden |Karen Wilkin
Yesterday, Igor Levit returned to Carnegie Hall, as he does frequently—as all great musicians should, I think. Carnegie Hall should present the best, regularly. But this does not always work out. For the reasons, consult industry insiders (who do not include me). Arcadi Volodos has not appeared in Carnegie Hall since 2003. Grigory Sokolov, since 1975. Like Igor Levit, they are Soviet-born pianists. You can see all three at the Salzburg Festival every summer.
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Jan 12, 2025 | 
newcriterion.com | Sarah Ruden |David Yezzi |Anthony Daniels |James Como
When the curtain opened at the Metropolitan Opera last night, a lady behind me said, “I love this.” When it opened on Act II, a man said, “Wow.” They were so right. Onstage was La bohème, in the Zeffirelli production of 1981. The Met has staged it more than five hundred times. It is a meal ticket for the company. It is also a great production. It will go, as they all do. The Aida of Sonja Frisell, which premiered in 1988, ran for about 250 performances. It has been replaced this season.
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Jan 10, 2025 | 
newcriterion.com | Sarah Ruden |Eric Gibsom |Tess Lewis |Anthony Daniels
I went to the Metropolitan Opera last night somewhat nervous. Onstage would be Tosca. In two of the main roles would be veteran stars: Sondra Radvanovsky (Tosca) and Bryn Terfel (Scarpia). They have given so much, for so many years. Would they have much left to give? They have a lot, yes. They were good. In fact, stupendous. From her opening cries of “Mario!” (three of them), Radvanovsky was sovereign. She was una vera Tosca, a true Tosca. Italian, mercurial, and smart, smart, smart.
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Jan 9, 2025 | 
newcriterion.com | Sarah Ruden |Eric Gibsom |Karen Wilkin |Anthony Daniels
I will put the bottom line in the first line: last night’s concert by the New York Philharmonic was very good. First-rate. What makes a first-rate orchestra? Personnel, of course—but the conductor too. First-rate personnel plus a lesser conductor equals . . . a concert a little gray, maybe? The Philharmonic was conducted last night by Daniele Rustioni, a Milanese born in 1983.
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
newcriterion.com | Sarah Ruden |Karen Wilkin |Anthony Daniels |Eric Gibsom
Last night, the New York Philharmonic was conducted by Kevin John Edusei, a German born in 1976. He cuts a dashing figure onstage: shaven head, trim physique, long coat, in the old style. Does it matter, what a conductor looks like? No—but there’s an element of theater in the concert business. The program began with a work by Samy Moussa, a Canadian born in 1984. I will discuss this work later—in a chronicle for the print magazine.
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
newcriterion.com | Sarah Ruden |Karen Wilkin |Anthony Daniels |Eric Gibsom
In his introduction to Hugo Charteris’s Pictures on the Wall, newly reprinted by the independent publisher Michael Walmer, David Lodge, who reviewed the novel in The Spectator when it was first published in 1963, mentions that Charteris was called in his time “essentially a writer of our day.” Lodge also notes that Charteris was praised during his career as a writer of “exceptional skill and sensitivity.” Charteris was decorated during in World War II for holding off a band of enemy soldiers...
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Jan 7, 2025 | 
newcriterion.com | Sarah Ruden |Anthony Daniels |Karen Wilkin |Eric Gibsom
Teatro alla Scala has picked many operas to open a new season, an event of perennial importance on the international classical-music calendar and one of great social prominence as well. Yet when the work in question is by Giuseppe Verdi, the occasion has a special aura, thanks to the unique relationship the Milan theater has had with this supreme composer.
