“Italy had its renaissance, Germany its reformation, France had Voltaire”, the historian Will Durant once commented. Born François-Marie Arouet, Voltaire (1694-1778) was known in his lifetime as the ...

Reading is one of my passions. I like books that make me think. Voltaire’s Candide is one of those exceptional novels that work on the reader’s sensibilities. "‘The most useful books," he wrote, "are ...

oltaire’s 17 th century Candide ou l’Optimisme (Candide: Optimism) is not merely a hallmark of the Enlightenment Age and holds as much relevance today as it did then, as it serves as a guide to more ...

Any opera set inside a massive circus tent boasting confetti cannons, a woman with one buttock and an eternally optimistic philosopher being hanged up by the neck cannot be classified as stuffy or dry ...

Leonard Bernstein's 1956 operetta "Candide," like Voltaire's novel on which it is based, is a sparklingly witty satire on grim themes including barbarity, religious intolerance and mankind's ...