In his book The Disappearance of Rituals, Korean-German philosopher Byun-Chul Han presents a genealogy of the disappearance of rituals and its catastrophic effects on society.

For the Utopian, a unified and uniform mass of humanity is enabled by the “abolition of war,” which in turn can only be safeguarded by a “supranational agency, ultimately a world government.”

Strauss’s opera prizes innocence in a time of chaos, beauty over disorder, and the transcendence of suffering. Daphne is precisely the work that could lend itself to the revitalization of an opera company.

The Spear serves as a lectio divina of sorts, that is, as an opportunity to imagine oneself in the action of the Holy Scriptures.

Ultimately, the founding and the success of the State of Israel can only be described in religious terms: the flourishing existence of today’s Israel is a miracle.

A step up from the very literal productions usually seen here, this co-production by Opéra de Monte-Carlo and San Francisco Opera removes the action from its usual eighteenth-century setting to the fateful year of 1914.

Pogo’s use of politics complements the other layers of art and satire perfectly. In a world where we are surrounded by bad art made for purely political purposes, Walt Kelly’s work is a breath of fresh air.

Bauerlein demonstrates in clear, elegant prose that a common frame of reference no longer exists, and the result for Millennials and Gen Z has been a disaster.

One only hopes that the current wave of political masochism in America will crest and that elites will understand that you cannot build a stable future by destroying the past or demonizing your heritage.

This is the Madama Butterfly we know and love—almost to the point of guilty pleasure.

“In the shadow of the eccentric, the charming, and the zany, terror lurks. Maybe that’s the background against which man’s wickedness is clearest.”—Lars von Trier

By asserting that the common good does exist and can be defined and applied, Vermeule contests the cultural Left and libertarian Right’s chimera of a values-neutral jurisprudence.