Also on the stage was the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and they would be conducted by Riccardo Muti, with whom they have had a relationship for almost fifty-five years. The first work on the program ...

That was almost a relief: this great pianist is human after all. Typically, he plays a “second concert” after the printed program is finished—a slew of encores. On Wednesday night, he played four, ...

Grace Hartigan began her art career free of the past. She had no technical training, education in art history, or particular ...

Jay Nordlinger n Donizetti’s “Maria Stuarda” at the Salzburg Festival.

George Loomis on “Les brigands,” performed by the Paris Opera.

The Salzburg Festival is staging Julius Caesar, with Emmanuelle Haïm in the pit. She leads Le Concert d’Astrée, the group she founded in 2000. The cast is an international one, loaded with ...

In North America, the Atlanta Opera will conclude its ongoing Ring cycle next spring, while the Metropolitan Opera has ...

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s three-volume opus, The Gulag Archipelago, which some have called the most important masterpiece of the twentieth century, is subtitled: “An Experiment in Literary ...

And in “The Author’s Apology” to Mrs. Warren’s Profession, which was first performed, amid scandal, in 1902, nearly a decade ...

Homer is often called the—or at least a—“father of Western civilization.” This is not a new idea. To take a prominent example, already before the end of the first century A.D., the Roman rhetorician ...

Every culture has a literature that is to some extent subterranean. Much of it deserves to stay there. But certain pieces occasionally bubble to the surface. Invariably this happens because the work ...

J us t 150 years ago, in 1869, Tolstoy published the final installment of War and Peace, often regarded as the greatest of all novels. In his time, Tolstoy was known as a nyetovshchik —someone who ...