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CBC
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Stellan Skarsgård on his love of morally ambiguous characters and why acting is a 'frightful job'
Star Wars is a classic story of good versus evil: there's no doubt that Luke Skywalker is the hero and Darth Vader is the villain. But in an interview with Q 's Tom Power, actor Stellan Skarsgård says Andor, the latest series in the Star Wars franchise, is a more nuanced story about intergalactic war — one with imperfect heroes and difficult sacrifices. His character, Luthen Rael, is a charming but ruthless rebel leader who fronts as an antiques dealer. It's the kind of morally ambiguous role that many actors would be delighted to take on. "People don't know if he's a good guy or a bad guy, which I really like, because none of us are really good guys or bad guys," Skarsgård says. "He does really terrible things, but so does any general. He sacrifices people for a cause — and so does every military. But is it the right cause? You don't know. And often you don't know until much later if it was the right cause. So this ambiguity, the grey zones, I'm very interested in." WATCH | Stellan Skarsgård's full interview with Q's Tom Power: Last week, the second and final season of Andor premiered on Disney+. While some critics can be skeptical about the emotional payoff of a blockbuster franchise show, Skarsgård says it's important to always remain engaged as an actor — especially when you're not saying anything at all. "If they cut away when you don't talk, you're f--ked," Skarsgård says frankly. "Half of the acting is between the lines — reacting. And the lines might just be dropped like a turd, poof! Like that. And then comes the reaction that says what the line was intended as." If they cut away when you don't talk, you're f--ked. Skarsgård's decades-long career has included roles in intense films like Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves and Nymphomaniac, as well as lighter fare such as Mamma Mia! and Good Will Hunting. But it doesn't matter how many years he's worked; some things about his job he'll never get used to, like putting on the massive flesh suit and prosthetics to play Baron Harkonnen in Denis Villeneuve's Dune series. "Acting is the most frightful thing — the most frightful job you can imagine," Skarsgård says. "You have to be on the edge all the time. You can't play safe.… If you get scared, you block yourself. I mean, you can't produce anything of value, you can't produce life, and it has to be alive, you know? You have to be relaxed to let life flow out of you. But you can't do that if you're afraid. Your worst enemy is yourself in a way. It is the fear. And you have to conquer the fear over and over again throughout the years." WATCH | Official trailer for Andor Season 2: The full interview with Stellan Skarsgård is available on our YouTube channe l and on . He also talks about his time working with Robin Williams on Good Will Hunting. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Interview with Stellan Skarsgård produced by Liv Pasquarelli.
Axios
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
At the Houston Grand Opera, two spring shows wrestle with love, faith and fate
Both of the spring shows at the Houston Grand Opera lean into the season's "truly, madly, deeply" theme — with heavy doses of religion — but they are distinctly different in story, tone and experience. State of the opera:" Breaking the Waves" is a contemporary opera that premiered in 2016, composed by Missy Mazzoli. It's sung in English and is unsettling and strange, but you will get hooked with the plot line. "Breaking the Waves" is about a devout young woman in a conservative religious community who believes sacrificing herself — emotionally and sexually — is the only way to save her paralyzed husband. The intrigue:"Breaking the Waves" was supposed to make its HGO debut in the 2020-2021 season, but it was delayed by the pandemic. The piece is sexually explicit in a way you don't expect on the opera stage — it has profanity, nudity and graphic scenes. Mazzoli wasn't sure she'd ever compose the piece. When her librettist suggested adapting Lars von Trier's 1996 film, she was hesitant — but she said "the idea wouldn't leave me alone." What they're saying: Mazzoli is part of a small group of composers bringing opera into the 21st century. She tells Axios, "I love being part of the operatic tradition … I'm not out here to destroy the tradition and burn it all down and build it again." "I see this film and this story as the story of a woman in an impossible situation where everyone is telling her what to do, and she's left only with her own agency and her own idea of what is moral and what is good," Mazzoli says. My experience:"Breaking the Waves" was a haunting, twisted story. I still don't know exactly how I feel about the plot, but I know the production and its ethical questions will stay with me. The opera is no doubt a talker for its hard-to-shake themes. I was also struck by the multipurpose set design and the dramatic, nautical-influenced score. Meanwhile, Richard Wagner's " Tannhäuser" is a traditional opera. It follows a knight torn between sacred love and earthly desire, wrestling with redemption and damnation. It's big. It's slow. It's full of Wagner's famous dramatic and soaring music. The production is grand, with beautiful, ornate set design. Wagner's music in "Tannhäuser" is as rich and sweeping as always but he continues to test my attention span with a four-hour opera. As beautiful as his productions are, I'm starting to realize the stories just might not be for me — at least now. That said, I'm probably in the minority, as plenty of people around me were excitedly analyzing the symbolism. If you go: "Breaking the Waves" runs through May 4, and "Tannhäuser" is on through May 11.
New York Times
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
At Houston Grand Opera, ‘This Is a Good Time'
On a recent morning at the Wortham Theater Center, home of Houston Grand Opera, the orchestra was playing through the intense score of Missy Mazzoli's 2016 opera 'Breaking the Waves.' Led by the conductor Patrick Summers, the players fine-tuned eerie glissando slides and dug into Mazzoli's creaking, scratching effects. At the same time, a few floors down, the young bass Alexandros Stavrakakis was at a coaching session, trying to find depths in the often dry Landgraf in Wagner's 'Tannhaüser.' Stavrakakis was singing his role for the first time, like the rest of the 'Tannhaüser' cast — a bold move for a Wagner opera at a major company. It was a reminder of another moment when old and new came together in Houston. In 1987, the Wortham opened with a pairing that was also a kind of manifesto: Verdi's 'Aida' and the world premiere of John Adams's 'Nixon in China,' a statement that opera's past and present could surge toward the future in Texas. At that point, it had been just over 30 years since Houston Grand Opera's scrappy beginnings, but it already had a reputation for being the rare American company fully invested in fostering new American work. It has been an early adopter of populist innovations like above-the-stage translations and outdoor simulcasts. It has shown resilience, too: Displaced for a season when the Wortham was flooded by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the company moved to a convention center and didn't miss a performance. Now, at 70, it continues to be a model for the field. With many opera companies in a doom loop of shrinkage caused by rising costs and stagnant (or worse) earnings, Houston has proved an exception. Driven by creative leadership and generous donors, its programming budget has risen steadily. By this summer, its endowment will have increased to nearly $120 million — almost double what it was five years ago. 'I'm trying to push the boundaries of self-esteem for H.G.O.,' said Khori Dastoor, 44, the company's chief executive since 2021. 'It starts with deciding and feeling that we can be leaders, instead of always comparing ourselves with bigger markets and larger institutions.' Even a success story in opera is one of struggles: for audiences, for fresh repertory, for relevance. The larger of the Wortham's two theaters has a capacity of about 2,400, significantly fewer seats than some major American houses, yet a standard like 'La Bohème' was only 70 percent sold this winter. Still, the company's ticket sales are stronger than just before the pandemic. Labor relations are calm. A robust reserve fund created after Harvey has provided a cushion for experimentation. Over a few days of rehearsals and interviews recently, the high quality of the work was clear. The orchestra has an easy rapport with Summers, the music director since the late 1990s. The chorus rehearses nights and weekends, with a group that includes teachers, doctors and lawyers as well as professional singers — but, led by Richard Bado, who has been with the company since 1984, it made a nuanced, mighty sound at the close of 'Tannhaüser.' More unusual, everyone attested to a palpable sense of stability and warmth, in a field better known for deficit cycles and fraught relations among employees and management. 'A lot of the time you don't really recognize the good times when they're happening,' said Dennis Whittaker, a bassist in the orchestra for almost 30 years. 'But this is a good time.' As Houston grows, its larger peers are on ever more tenuous footing. The Metropolitan Opera, still the country's titan, has been forced to raid its endowment and trim its performance schedule. Lyric Opera of Chicago and San Francisco Opera's seasons have been slashed to roughly 40 main stage performances of six titles, around the same volume Houston has maintained for years. But because of legacy labor contracts and other overhead costs, Chicago's annual budget is over $70 million and San Francisco's nearly $90 million, figures that are perilously difficult to cover as productivity declines. Houston spends just $33 million for a similar output. Without consistent sellouts, Dastoor is not looking to add more main stage productions any time soon, but she is insistent that the company does need to get bigger. 'Maintenance of the current audience will lead to failure,' she said. 'The only viable path to sustainability is growth.' After World War II, the city's appetite for opera was whetted by touring visits from the Met, and Walter Herbert, a German conductor who had fled the Nazis, saw an opening. Houston Grand Opera was inaugurated with Strauss's 'Salome' — then still a daring choice that showed the venturesome spirit at the company's core. Finances were touch and go in those early years, but star singers like Jon Vickers and Beverly Sills began to appear, and in 1972 David Gockley, just 28, succeeded Herbert as general director, remaining in the position until 2005. Gockley had vision and charisma at the right moment, with Houston's wealth exploding as the oil industry boomed. In 1974, the company produced Thomas Pasatieri's 'The Seagull,' its first commissioned work of dozens to date. Over the next few years it gave the first fully professional performances of Scott Joplin's 'Treemonisha' and a landmark version of Gershwin's 'Porgy and Bess,' with both productions transferring to Broadway. The company formed a close relationship with the composer Carlisle Floyd, who helped found its young artist program. Gockley brought in some audacious interpretations of the classics, as well as musical theater that made sense alongside Verdi; in 1984, Houston was the first opera house to present Sondheim's 'Sweeney Todd.' Few other big companies would have had the patience and flexibility to germinate Meredith Monk's unconventional 'Atlas.' The opening of the Wortham brought gleaming facilities, including an 1,100-seat second theater for more intimate pieces. When the Houston Symphony, which had collaborated with the opera since its founding, wanted to move on, Summers was hired to build a house orchestra. After shaping an ensemble up for the challenge of scores like Wagner's 'Ring' and Mieczyslaw Weinberg's 'The Passenger,' which toured to New York in 2014, Summers will step down as artistic and music director after next season. 'I admire Khori immensely,' he said, 'and I wanted to stay long enough into her tenure to give her continuity. Now it feels like a natural stopping point.' Finding his replacement is a priority for Dastoor, who trained as a soprano and attended 'Tannhaüser' rehearsal with an open score in her lap, tapping out the piano part on the pages with her fingers. She came to Houston from Opera San José in California, which she led after a period working for the Packard Humanities Institute, a large family foundation that gave her insight into the mind-set of wealthy donors. She has already shown skill at fund-raising: In 2023, a $22 million gift from Sarah and Ernest Butler was the largest in the company's history. But the city's donor base has long been said to be unusually committed. 'It's a very Houston thing: 'It has to be the best, and if it is, I will support you,'' Bado said. 'So the support has not waned.' Claire Liu, the chair of the company's board, said: 'Houston started as a really entrepreneurial environment, full of handshake deals. So people trust each other; people help each other. You have an incredibly philanthropic community. They want the city to be successful.' Where will all that growth go, if not into main stage offerings? Marc Scorca, the chief executive of Opera America, a trade group, said that Houston, like its peers, needs 'to show artistic and civic value outside the walls of the opera house, the opera bubble.' Under Gockley's successor, Anthony Freud, the company invested in works that emerged from the community, like a mariachi opera and an oratorio based on interviews with immigrants in the Houston area. Dastoor successfully tried out a Family Day performance this fall, and recently brought child-friendly work to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, which attracts huge crowds. Forays like this outside the Wortham, already a focus of the company's education and community partnerships, are expected to be an ever greater part of operations. 'If we're going to 70, 80, 100 venues every season,' Dastoor said, 'doing hundreds of events, that all informs the main stage. It isn't on the side.' Dastoor doesn't rest on the company's laurels or dismiss the obstacles it faces. 'We don't want to play to half-empty houses,' she said. 'We want to find a sweet spot, to grow with the community and see what they respond to.' The result, as everywhere in opera, is a mixture of chestnuts and riskier fare. Next season leans on 'Porgy and Bess,' an audience favorite that will get nine performances, and runs of the stalwarts 'Hansel and Gretel' and 'The Barber of Seville.' But there will also be Robert Wilson's enigmatic staging of Handel's 'Messiah,' the company's first production of Puccini's 'Il Trittico' and a revised version of Kevin Puts's 'Silent Night' that will travel to the Met. The young artist program, the Butler Studio, will put on Carlisle Floyd's masterpiece, 'Of Mice and Men,' in the Wortham's smaller space; using that smaller theater more often is an aim for the coming years. A major fund-raising campaign is in its early stages, of a size that Dastoor hopes will ensure the company's freedom from year-after-year anxieties, once and for all. 'We could get off this hamster wheel,' she said. 'My legacy, I hope, will be building an audience for opera in a modern American city.'
South China Morning Post
13-02-2025
- Health
- South China Morning Post
Director Lars von Trier admitted to care facility for Parkinson's disease
Danish film director Lars von Trier has been admitted to a care facility for Parkinson's disease, his producer said Wednesday. 'Lars is currently associated with a care centre that can provide him with the treatment and care his condition requires,' Louise Vesth, a producer at von Trier's production company Zentropa, wrote on Instagram, according to a translation. 'Lars is doing well under the circumstances.' Vesth clarified that she was sharing the news because of speculation in the Danish media, and declined to offer any additional comments. The Melancholia and Breaking the Waves director, 68, publicly revealed his diagnosis in 2022. Director Lars von Trier and 'Melancholia' cast member Kirsten Dunst in 2011. File photo: Reuters During an interview with Variety at the time, he opened up on how his condition had affected his work. 'It's a disease you can't take away; you can work with the symptoms, though,' he said. 'I just have to get used to that I shake and not be shameful in front of people. And then continue because what else should I do?'
