The Dictatorship
‘Monster’s Paradise’ lampooning Trump has world premiere at Hamburg Opera
HAMBURG, Germany (AP) — Tobias Kratzer spoke in disbelief ahead of the world premiere of “Monster’s Paradise” by Olga Neuwirth and Elfriede Jelinek, which features a gluttonous, ravenous, insatiable President-King, lampooning U.S. President Donald Trump.
“The metaphor has become a reality,” the Hamburg State Opera artistic director said in his office Sunday morning. “I’m really hoping in — what is it, eight hours? — the piece is not completely outdated because up until now it has always gone closer and closer to not being a satire but being reality.”
Jelinek, 79 and winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature, collaborated with Neuwirth for the first time in two decades, the Austrian duo combining on a German-language libretto. The 57-year-old Neuwirth won the 2022 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, three years after she became the first woman composer with a work presented at the Vienna State Opera.
Chorus members dressed as zombies and roamed the foyers before the opera and during the intermission, along with Disney-styled princesses and dancing hot dogs. The opera began with a Las Vegas-style LED sign and action on a passerelle.
A 19th-century satire was the starting point
Alfred Jarry’s 1896 play “Ubu Roi” was the inspiration, a profane, scatological work that had a one-performance run in Paris, cut short by an angry audience response.
Aspects of Jarry’s King Wenceslas and Ubu characters were adapted into The President-King for what Neuwirth and Jelinek call a Grand Guignol opera, which has a six-performance run through Feb. 19. It moves to the Zurich Opera from March 8 to April 12 and next season to Austria’s Oper Graz. An audio recording is planned.
The President-King entered in a gilded Oval Office with a Coca-Cola filled refrigerator. A golden crown sat on his desk along with a red button that jettisoned visitors such as an Elvis Presley impersonator in the manner of a TV game show as a trio of red X-shaped lights flashed. A woman resembling Melania Trump lurked in the background.
“I have long known Jarry’s play, but when Trump came to power, I instantly thought of it,” Jelinek said in an emailed response to questions translated from German.
Vampi and Bampi, a pair of pun-prone vampires sung by Sarah Defrise and Kristina Stanek, are avatars of the authors during five scenes that unfold over 2 hours, 45 minutes, and they frame action in the manner of Wagner’s Rheinmaidens and Norns. The President-King (sung by Georg Nigl) is opposed by Gorgonzilla (Anna Clementi), a monster spawned by a nuclear accident. One of the early titles was “Godzilla,” but it was changed because of a rights issue.
Mickey and Tuckey, the President-King’s adjutants sung by countertenors Andrew Watts and Eric Jurenas, were patterned after Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, according to Kratzer, who directed the production. They sing lines such as: “Nobody has such high numbers as you.”
Charlotte Rampling, in several projected videos, portrays a character called The Goddess who defends nature and civilization. Gorgonzilla devours the The President-King, but the creature also becomes an authoritarian. The opera ends with video of the vampires drifting on a platform along the Elbe while playing Schubert on a Bösendorfer piano, worrying the Earth has been destroyed by its leaders.
Outlandish portrayal of Trump-like character
The President-King grows to huge dimensions while wearing a diaper and golden necktie in Rainer Sellmaier’s set and costume design, and he plants a golf club on Gorgonzilla’s rock, much like the White House AI photo of Trump landing on Greenland. The President-King boasts of winning “Ohoho” and “Tuxus,” and his lead in “Pennsilfania” isn’t even close.
Wearing Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy masks, the vampires attack The President-King with sledgehammers and saws, which have no impact. The one resembling Miss Piggy mimics missing with a rifle, prompting The President-King to raise a fist in defiance.
“People of power are always afraid of humor,” Neuwirth said. “For example, Hitler was so afraid of Charlie Chaplin’s `The (Great) Dictator’ — he watched it secretly in his room in Berlin — because they are afraid to be laughed at. They have this ego, which is not allowed to be questioned.”
Neuwirth composed for a Mozart-sized orchestra adding an electric guitar and a drum kit, as characters often used Sprechstimme — spoken-word singing. Conductor Titus Engle melded Neuwirth’s many musical genres.
“I’m not playing the American president, but it’s very close,” Nigl said. “I am playing a misogynist. I am playing a braggart. I am playing a fraudster, a despiser.”
Nigl portrayed Russian President Vladimir Putin last year in Gordon Kampe’s “Die Kreide im Mund des Wolfs (The Chalk in the Wolf’s Mouth).” Nigl said his most important words in this opera are when he sings: “He who has millions does not need voters.”
Trump’s reaction is on their minds
Neuwirth vowed “I’m never going to write an opera again,” adding she will reveal her reason at a later date.
She is aware she could face repercussions from the U.S. administration.
“I’m kind of a little bit afraid because I want to still enter the United States,” she said.
Jelinek remained unconcerned.
“I am not afraid. I am a small, unimportant European woman,” she wrote in her emailed responses.
California voters will consider a controversial proposal in November to temporarily raise taxes on billionaires after the labor union backing the measure announced Thursday it would forge ahead despite pressure from critics to withdraw it.
The proposal, backed by the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Workers West, would impose a one-time 5% tax on individuals whose net worth exceeds $1 billion and who were living in the state as of Jan. 1, 2026. The goal is to generate $100 billion in revenue, mainly to fund the state’s Medicaid system after federal cuts.
“I am all in on this,” union President Dave Regan said on a Zoom call, adding that opponents of the proposal are “totally out of touch.”
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and many traditional allies of the union oppose the measure. They argue it is a temporary fix for an ongoing problem and that it would push the ultrawealthy to leave the state, taking the money they would contribute in income taxes with them. Newsom, who is considering a presidential run as he prepares to leave office in January, has generally opposed tax increases during his time as governor.
A coalition of healthcare, education and housing groups — including the California Medical Association and California School Boards Association — banded together last week to fight the tax.
“The dangerous wealth tax directly threatens vital funding for education and schools, healthcare and clinics, public safety, and infrastructure projects by making California’s revenue even more volatile,” the coalition said in a statement.
Brian Brokaw, a Newsom political adviser who is leading a political committee opposing the tax, said it would “make California’s biggest challenges worse.”
“Driving away the state’s sustainable tax base for a one-time grab is bad policy and an even worse deal for 40 million Californians who will be left holding the bag,” he said in a statement.
Under the proposal, the state would spend the money generated from the tax over multiple years. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the proposal would generate tens of billions of dollars in the first few years, but that income tax revenues would subsequently decline by hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Many of the Silicon Valley tech moguls who oppose the measure have already moved their assets to other states or threatened to do so to avoid the possible tax. They have also spent millions to try to defeat it.
Since the proposal was announced in October, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has donated $82 million to a political committee called Building a Better California that backs a variety of initiatives designed to blunt the billionaire tax proposal. It has raised more than $118 million, counting Brin’s contributions, from fewer than a dozen donors.
California relies on its top 1% of earnersfor nearly half of its personal income tax revenue.
The union offered to scale back its proposal last week, asking Newsom to back a 2% tax on billionaires instead. But the governor’s office said the lower rate didn’t change his stance.
The proposed tax may have piqued the interest of many Democrats because it comes at a time when they are particularly concerned about affordability, income inequality and federal cutbacks to government programs, said Martin Gilens, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“There’s kind of a perfect storm that sort of bolsters preexisting inclinations to be sympathetic to the idea of raising taxes on the well-to-do,” he said.
But there’s a catch. Support for ballot initiatives often declines as the election nears, and if the measure passes, it’s likely to face legal challenges, Gilens said.
Since taking office one week ago, Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligence, has busied himself on social media posting flattering photos of President Donald Trump, trivia about a former counterintelligence agent and praising his current staff.
What the Trump loyalist with no intelligence experience has not done is address the public about his plans, or calm the unease and confusion inside the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is being described by top officials as “chaotic” amid firings of senior personnel with threats of more to come.
One image posted to the official X account of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, apparently artificial intelligence-generated, features Trump raising a clenched fist in the air with two B-2 stealth bombers in the sky behind him. Another is an image of the president, his fist clenched, glowering as he stands behind the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk.
In another post, Pulte, who was expected to gut the workforce of the National Counterterrorism Center, instead declared the staff there “true professionals and American patriots” after he said he spent time with them, adding “it is a privilege to work beside them.”
And in an apparent attempt at levity, Pulte reposted a message reminding Americans that Tuesday was “National Typewriter Day” and informing them of the role that a former Army counterintelligence agent played.
“Fun CI fact,” the post reads. “Former Army CI Special Agent Leroy Anderson composed ‘The Typewriter’ on October 9, 1950.”
But Pulte’s arrival has sparked anxiety and fear among the office’s workforce, three former U.S. intelligence officials told MS NOW, granted anonymity to address a sensitive topic.
They said that a half dozen political appointees were removed from their posts and several dozen staffers were sent back to their home intelligence agencies. Beyond that, little else is known about Pulte’s plans.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told MS NOW that his requests for more information from the office, known by the acronym ODNI, have been rebuffed.
“I’ve been calling over there all day and can’t get my calls returned,” said Himes.
He later said, “I spoke directly to their office of congressional affairs. They said they had nothing for me.”
“It seems like it’s totally chaotic at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on a podcast Wednesday. “There was word that there was going to be firings and then he said he changed his mind. We don’t know.”
Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA official and now an MS NOW contributor, said that staff in the intelligence community do not know what to think.
“Everyone is in the same boat and unsure of what is going on,” he said. “That said, there is no love lost for the DNI, as many believe that there is redundancy that does need to be cut.”
The other former U.S. intelligence officials said they agree that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is in need of reform. The agency was created after a lack of information sharing among U.S. intelligence agencies played a role in the failure to stop the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. ODNI’s mission is to ensure that the country’s now 18 different intelligence agencies share information with one another.
But the former intelligence officials said Pulte is patently unqualified to design or carry out those reforms.
“As with many things Trump alights upon, there is a sliver of truth here but he goes about addressing it in the worst possible way,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW, granted anonymity over concerns of retaliation. “But mass firings without any kind of sense of what you are trying to accomplish is addressing it in the most ham-handed way.”
That former official, as well as Warner and Himes, have said they fear that Pulte’s mission is to use his position as the nation’s top intelligence official to help Trump interfere in the midterm elections in November.
Pulte, who simultaneously serves as the Trump administration’s top federal housing official as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, used government mortgage information to file several criminal referrals against Democrats whom Trump considered enemies, including Sen. Adam Schiff of California and New York State Attorney General Letitia James. None of Pulte’s referrals have resulted in criminal convictions.
One fear expressed by Warner and some former intelligence officials is that Pulte may try to falsely claim that his office has found evidence that foreign governments are secretly funding Democratic candidates.
One way he could do that, they say, is by falsely claiming foreign actors have hacked U.S. voting machines and altered vote totals in favor of Democrats. And Pulte and FBI agents could seize voting machines, ballots and election records in November — as Gabbard did in Fulton County, Georgia, last year at Trump’s behest — as part of voter fraud investigations that please the president.
“I have to tell you, I was extraordinarily concerned about the former director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, interfering in our election,” Warner told NPR earlier this month. “The concerns I had with Tulsi Gabbard now, upon reflection, look small versus the concerns I have with Bill Pulte.”
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
Former President Barack Obama slammed President Donald Trump for obsessing over him while serving in the nation’s highest office.
“I obviously, you know, have a room in his head. A suite in his head,” Obama said an an episode of the podcast “All The Smoke,” posted Wednesday.
“Look, first of all, when I was president, the last thing I had time to do was worry about what somebody said, or what my predecessor did,” Obama told the two hosts, former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. “They’re gone. I’ve got work to do.”
Trump has a long history of publicly insulting the former president, often invoking Obama’s middle name, Hussein.
Trump has also heavily promoted the false and racist “birther” conspiracy theory, which claimed that Obama was ineligible to serve as president because he was born in Kenya rather than the United States.
Earlier this year, Trump drew criticism after sharing a racist artificial intelligence-generated video on his Truth Social account depicting the former president and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes. The video was later deleted, and Trump did not apologize.
Before launching the war against Iran with Israel on Feb. 28, Trump repeatedly criticized the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 diplomatic agreement primarily negotiated by Obama that also limited Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for sweeping economic sanctions relief.
More recently, Trump trashed the newly debuted Obama Presidential Center in Chicago as a “very unattractive building” and “total disaster,” adding that when his presidential library opens, it will be “on time, on budget, best location in Miami.”
Without mentioning Trump by name, Obama criticized leaders who fixate on their predecessors, characterizing their priorities as misplaced.
“If you’re doing the job right, everyday, you’ve got five, ten things that are real hard. And you have to be constantly focused,” Obama said.
“The idea that I’d be worrying about somebody who came before and me trying to measure, ‘What’s he done today?’ Constantly worrying about that is a strange thing to me. It shows me somebody who’s not focused on the American people and the job they’re supposed to do.”
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship10 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words