Politics Plus

Yesterday, The radio opera was “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs”[sic] by Mason Bates, libretto by Mark Campbell, in a recording from the Santa Fe Opera, where it premiered in 2017. My biggest surprise of the week was that it was aired on my local radio station. There had been no promotion for it, and these programs are expensive to air, and the most recent fund drive had not made goal. So maybe it is a one-time broadcast – the most recent new manager had made the one announcer who is as nuts about opera the program director, and this opera is, to say the least, a rarity. It is told with multiple out-of-sequence flashbacks – the composer structured it in a musical circle, in homage to Jobs’s belief that life is a circle. Its characters are real people and it’s based on events which occurred, but it makes no claim to be accurate in detail. It has had subsequent performances, and it has been commercially recorded (in fact, it won a Grammy) One of the things I love about Santa Fe is that they do a premier every season. So many companies are terrified of premiers and a contemporary composer has a had time getting a new opera perfi=oemed. But Santa Fe has been so successful that other companies are now putting on new operas as well. I’ve seen a couple I’d love to see again, and there are some I haven’t seen that I’d love to see – several that I’ve heard and one in particular that I haven’t (but if WFMT is going to keep including premiers I eventually may) – “The Lord of Cries” by John Cotigliano in which he fuses “The Bacchae” and “Dracula” – yes, it wounds weird, but Corigliano is very good at combining stories and making the result seamless. I might just add that WFMT knows that opera is meant to be seem, and works hard to post folders of excellent professional photos of the productions it presents so that one can at least get a feel of the visuals.

Cartoon(s) –

Short Takes –

Robert Reich – What the crypto crash tells us
Quote – Earlier this week, Bitcoin dropped 15 percent over 24 hours to its lowest value since December 2020, and Ether, the second-most valuable cryptocurrency, fell about 16 percent. Last month, TerraUSD, a stablecoin — a system that was supposed to perform a lot like a conventional bank account but was backed only by a cryptocurrency called Luna — collapsed, losing 97 percent of its value in just 24 hours, apparently destroying some investors’ life savings. The implosion helped trigger a crypto meltdown that erased $300 billion in value across the market.
Click through for details. No, I can’t imagine anyone here has “invested” in this stuff – but if you know someone who has. you can pass it on. And, in any case, what a bunch of random idiots do can affect everyone, especially if they do it with money.

Wonkette – The Myth Of The ‘Normal’ Republican
Quote – The Republican Party is very confused. On one hand you have GOP politicians hoping to move forward with their regularly scheduled GOP political terribleness. On the other, GOP politicians are doubling down on being led by a twice-impeached former reality TV host who cost them the White House. In some cases, you have both in the very same GOP politician! Let’s check out a few examples from this week’s Sunday shows.
Click through for examples. In today’s Video Thread, Trae describes certain Republicans as “Team Normal” (As opposed to “Team Bugf**k,” but he also stresses that “Team Normal” is not to be trusted either.

Food For Thought