New Criterion

Capriccio, by Richard Strauss, at the Metropolitan Opera, New York. Close on the heels of Jonathan Miller's abysmal updating of Stravinsky's Rake's Progress at the Met comes the scarcely less misguided Capriccio, set by John Cox in the 1920s. Richard...

Le martyre de Saint Sebastien, by Claude Debussy, at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. In that odd corner of the repertory reserved for acknowledged masterpieces that seldom, if ever, get their due, pride of place...

Abolish women's studies So-called "women's studies" programs began cropping up on campuses across the country in the 1970s. Although they started largely in imitation of the militant black studies programs that had swept the country's colleges and...

"Rodrigo Moynihan: The Late Paintings" at the Robert Miller Gallery, New York. December 9, 1997-January 24, 1998. Dark clouds have silver linings. An incidental consolation of the shift that has occurred in the visual arts in recent decades--the...

"Stuart Shils: Irish Landscapes" at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York. December 4, 1997-January 3, 1998. Dark clouds have silver linings. An incidental consolation of the shift that has occurred in the visual arts in recent decades--the triumph...

Reflections on a cultural revolution: VI Everyone who feels bored cries out for change. With this demand I am in complete sympathy, but it is necessary to act in accordance with some settled principle.... Nil admirari [nothing is to be marveled...

Wallace Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose has been edited by Frank Kermode, the author of, among other writings on Stevens, a fine little book published here in Grove's Evergreen Pilot series as Wallace Stevens (1961), and by Joan Richardson, the...