Latest news with #Mazzoli
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.
Chicago Tribune
18-03-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
David Hiller: Late Wyoming senator embraced a bipartisan spirit that we need now
Our country could use more political leaders like Alan K. Simpson, the former Wyoming U.S. senator who died March 14 at the age of 93. I got to know Simpson in 1981, during his first term as a senator. I had recently begun working as a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith at the start of President Ronald Reagan's administration. Immigration was in crisis in the aftermath of the 1980 Mariel boatlift that brought more than 100,000 migrants from Cuba, as well as chronic undocumented migration at the southern border. In addition, more than 200,000 refugees were admitted to the U.S. in 1980, primarily from Vietnam and Cambodia, following the end of the Vietnam War. Facing these pressing issues, Reagan asked Smith to lead the administration's response, and the attorney general asked me to work on it. Simpson was chair of the immigration subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was a folksy, plain-spoken, sharp-humored lawyer and son of a former Wyoming senator and governor. I was also personally drawn to him as my brother Scott had attended the University of Wyoming where he met his wife, Ruth. Over the next two years, we worked with Simpson and his staff, as well as his counterpart on the House side, Rep. Romano Mazzoli, a Democrat from Kentucky, to find solutions for our immigration and refugee situation. Simpson and Mazzoli were something of an odd couple: Simpson, a Republican, was tall and slender, gregarious, and even a little corny, whereas Mazzoli, a Democrat, was short and compact, quieter and reserved. But both were known to share an interest in immigration. Mazzoli's father had emigrated from Italy. Simpson, as a Boy Scout in the 1940s, had met Scouts from Japanese American families who were interned at a camp in Wyoming during World War II. (One of the Scouts Simpson met was 12-year-old Norman Mineta, who would later become a Democratic congressman and secretary of transportation under President George W. Bush.) Simpson and Mazzoli's efforts eventually led to the Immigration Control and Reform Act, signed into law by Reagan in 1986. The legislative journey was long and uncertain, with the contested bill often viewed as dead. Its ultimate passage owes a lot to the tenacity of Simpson and Mazzoli. We also had a president in Reagan who hailed from a border state, knew both the challenges and the benefits of immigration, and had a track record of working across party lines. The legislation included the first-ever prohibition on hiring workers without documentation, more border enforcement, expanded visas for needed temporary workers and a path to legal status for longtime undocumented residents. This was the last time there was comprehensive immigration reform in our country. Clearly, the 1986 law did not solve our country's immigration issues for all time. Border enforcement remained too weak, even as the forces propelling migration from Central and South America were exploding. And the need for immigrants in our workforce has never been greater. Nonetheless, repeated efforts to again forge bipartisan solutions have failed in the years since. Simpson left the Senate after three terms in 1997. In 2010, President Barack Obama appointed him and Erskine Bowles, a former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, to lead a bipartisan commission on strategies to reduce the growing federal deficits and debt level. They came up with bipartisan recommendations for a combined $4 trillion in spending cuts and tax increases. Legislative efforts to implement some or all of the Simpson-Bowles recommendations have failed several times, facing critics on the left for entitlement spending cuts and critics on the right for tax increases. Federal debt was $13.5 trillion in 2010. It is now more than $36 trillion. Simpson embodied the practical, can-do, bipartisan approach to government that used to be a hallmark of our politics. His passing reminds us of what is possible.
