Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 584

Hillary Clinton Comes out Against Obamacare Tax

The Clinton campaign is expected to break with the Obama administration and call for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s “Cadillac tax”, dealing a blow to the front of Democratic unanimity around the president’s signature legislative achievement. Clinton is not attacking the tax from the right; rather, she is joining Bernie Sanders in attacking it from the left and under pressure from unions. The New York Times reports:

Hillary Rodham Clinton will in the coming days speak out against the so-called Cadillac tax on certain health care plans, a move that is part of a series of reforms she’s suggesting for the Affordable Care Act, according to a union official briefed on her plans.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides informed Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, of her intentions in the last few days, according to a senior official with the labor group. The union made an early endorsement of Mrs. Clinton in July.

Many of the union’s members would be affected by the Cadillac tax, which imposes taxes on pricey employer-based coverage plans whose premiums exceed $10,200 a year for individuals and $27,500 for families. The tax is imposed on employers, who can avoid it by reducing benefits to their workers. Its purpose is to help rein in health care costs over all.

The growing chorus of figures on both sides announcing their opposition to the tax highlights one of the major challenges for Obamacare: It’s expensive, and even Democrats can’t agree on how to pay for it. The Cadillac tax was expected to raise $87 billion in 10 years. As Noah Rothman pointed out, Clinton has only said that she will make up for the revenue using “other means”—meaning in all likelihood a different tax that is less painful for Democratic constituencies.

But either way, this story shows that debate over the law is not yet over. Some provisions, including but not at all limited to the Cadillac tax, have not even been implemented yet, and others, like the employer mandate, have always had critics on the left. It’s too early for anyone to declare victory in the Obamacare wars when battles over the law’s implementation remain.

But in the end, it’s key to remember that tinkering around the edges of Obamacare is not a healthcare policy. We need a radical rethinking of the American healthcare system to bring costs under control. Cadillac tax or no, American healthcare is too expensive, and in desperate need of major, market-oriented reforms, like better use of remote monitoring and expanded scope of practice for nurse practitioners, to make U.S. healthcare delivery better, faster, and cheaper.

Russians in the Air over Iraq

As President Barack Obama and President Vladimir Putin traded veiled (and not-so-veiled) barbs during their speeches to the UN General Assembly yesterday, before retiring to a tense but supposedly “frank” and “productive” meeting to discuss the future of Syria, details were emerging as to what exactly Russia would be doing elsewhere in the Middle East: For one, they will be flying spy planes over Iraq. WSJ:

An Iraqi defense ministry spokesman said Monday that his country would be open to Russian intelligence gathering in Iraqi airspace […]

“If Russia needs to participate in aircraft reconnaissance flights, it can make a formal request to the Iraqi government and there will be no objection in my opinion,” said the spokesman, Brig. Gen. Tahseen Ibrahim.

Iraqi authorities surprised the United States this weekend by announcing that they had entered into an intelligence-sharing agreement with Russia, Iran, and Syria in a bid to fight Islamic State militants across the region. And now, comes this Iraqi statement that Russian surveillance flights would be OK.

Washington is now reconsidering what intelligence it can share with Baghdad, given that any information is likely to make it to Russia, and, more importantly, to Syria. However, given that the kind of intelligence being shared with Iraq currently is not that sensitive, Pentagon officials said that the fight will go on, and that the U.S. will continue bombing ISIS: “It does add a degree of complexity to our operations, but it doesn’t cause us to have to stop”, said a military spokesman.But the bigger problem is that yet again, the U.S. appears to have been caught flatfooted, while Russia is taking the strategic initiative. Administration and military officials are professing complete puzzlement about Russia’s general intentions in the Middle East to the press—either because they genuinely don’t know what the Russians are doing or because the administration doesn’t how to respond. Writing in Foreign Policy today, David Rothkopf identifies the larger pattern at work here:

We have gone from the victory-at-any-cost mindset of World War II to the exit-at-any-cost mindset of the Obama years.

While self-described “realists” may hail the restraint and President Eeyore’s unrivaled mastery of focusing on the downside to any possible U.S. action, and while the president’s defenders will no doubt also revert to the always legitimate argument that the disastrous invasion of Iraq played a big role in getting us to where we are today, they neglect a critical fact. What’s done is done. We are where we are.[..]When an American president is left with a lousy situation and no good options, then there is still the necessity of figuring out how to best advance U.S. interests going forward. (The specter of foreign fighters, the stream of refugees into Europe, and the strategic consequences of long-term control of the Middle East all underscore that we actually do have long-term interests and the “it’s not our problem argument” is just naive and shortsighted.) “It’s too hard” and “I don’t want to play” are not acceptable answers because what they produce is precisely what we have gotten: adversaries seizing the initiative and setting in motion a potential permanent redistribution of power and influence in a strategically important region of the world.

Whether this Administration wants to play or not, it has fifteen months left when it’s supposed to be in the game. Worrying, to say the least. Meanwhile, it’s well worth reading Rothkopf’s whole piece.

This Company Doesn’t Care Where You Went to College

Deloitte is the latest major UK company to announce that its domestic recruiters will no longer consider which university applicants attended. The consulting giant says focusing on where prospective employees got their degree is anti-meritocratic and obstructs the firm’s efforts to hire the best of the best. Quartz reports:

In an effort to boost diversity and social mobility, recruiters for accounting and consulting firm Deloitte will not see the names of job applicants’ schools and universities next year in the UK. […]

Deloitte is the largest of 19 companies in the UK that have signed up to use the Contextual Recruitment System, a tool released last year from recruitment firm Rare that gathers this background data. The goal, the firm says, is to “get much closer to achieving the holy grail of identifying candidates with potential, rather than just with polish.”

This sounds like a very promising change of policy, and we hope that companies on this side of the pond are paying attention. Many Anglo-American employers put far too much weight on educational prestige, passing over well-qualified young people who didn’t have the money, personal connections, or desire to get an elite degree. And as Deloitte seems to recognize, relying on university brand name to sort applicants is inefficient from a business perspective. It may or may not be the case that Oxford graduates make better employees on average than graduates of the University of East London—but even if they did, it would be far better for the company to hire the most promising applicants from both schools, rather than simply relying on how university admission committees (which, in any case, presumably have different criteria from employers) sorted people years earlier.

In the United States (and, to a lesser extent, in the UK), much of our discussion about inequality and mobility revolves around which colleges people go to. Affirmative action debates are so heated in part because people recognize that where one goes to college can have a tremendous impact on job prospects. The federal government has pumped more and more money into subsidized student loans on the belief that earning an expensive credential is required in order to rise into the middle class. But what if we could rearrange our job market so that the skills young Americans have, rather than the college they attended, were the most important factor in the hiring process? It’s probably impossible to do this completely—attending an elite institution will always serve as a kind of signaling device—but even moving modestly in that direction, as Deloitte is, could unleash tremendous potential, for employers, employees, and the higher education system itself.

Russia Confronted by Grim Crude Reality

Russia says it will pump slightly more oil this year than last, though it expects it will miss the 2015 targets set out by its Economy Ministry. But while Moscow seems to be successfully treading water for now, it admits that it could start sinking if prices stay low. Reuters reports:

“If prices remain at a low level for a very long time, then a reduction in production of 5-10 percent is entirely possible, that is if the prices stay at a low level for several years,” [said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich]. […]

He said the government would not take artificial steps to reduce output, but that a reduction would be the natural consequence of low prices for oil companies’ investment plans.

But the bad news for Moscow doesn’t stop there. As Bloomberg reports, Russia is drastically reducing the number of offshore wells it plans to drill over the next couple of years, choosing to delay the projects in the hopes of a rebound in global prices:

Russia’s state-run energy giants Rosneft OJSC and Gazprom PJSC are delaying some offshore drilling by two to three years because of sanctions and weaker oil prices, according to the country’s Ministry of Natural Resources.

The nation will drill two offshore wells in 2017, down from an original plan for 14, Denis Khramov, deputy minister, said Tuesday at a conference in Russia’s Far East. The delay means 28 wells will be drilled in 2019 instead of 19, he said.

Russia’s medium-term energy prospects are downright dismal. No country in the world has more oil and gas than Russia, and the Kremlin has wielded its exports to great effect in the past, buoying its national budget and using hydrocarbon sales as a geopolitical lever. But over the past 15 months the price of oil has dropped from over $110 per barrel down below $50, and with the market still oversupplied and a flood of new Iranian crude ready to come online once sanctions are officially lifted, Moscow is being backed into a corner. As we wrote this summer, Russia is particularly vulnerable to new competition from Iran, as both countries will be attempting to sell the same variety of heavy, sulfurous crude in Europe.

And for Putin, that has to be the most terrifying aspect of all of this: that it looks like things are going to get worse before they get better. It’s hard to imagine demand spiking high enough to send prices back above $100 per barrel, especially with China’s weakened economy. And on the supply side of things, OPEC is still resisting calls to cut production even while American shale producers are finding ways to keep output up on slimmer margins. This is Russia’s new reality, and it’s not a pretty sight.

A Humiliating Setback in Afghanistan

After a summer-long effort, Taliban forces stormed the northern city of Kunduz in Afghanistan yesterday, driving government forces to the city’s airport in its outskirts. Kabul had dismissed warnings of the city’s vulnerability all summer amid pleas by local militia for reinforcements and armaments. Now, in response, the United States has launched airstrikes in support of a government push to drive the Taliban out, but the New York Times reports that success is far from guaranteed:

While the Afghan government has vowed to retake Kunduz soon, many analysts and officials predict a difficult fight ahead. The Taliban have penetrated residential areas, which make it costly to carry out airstrikes and operations involving heavy weaponry.

Additionally, because the insurgents have long controlled most of the districts surrounding the city and have been able to threaten highways in the neighboring provinces, it could be difficult for the Afghan government to resupply and reinforce its troops.

Didn’t President Obama proclaim back in 2008 that he had a plan to win this just and necessary war? Didn’t he attack George Bush for forgetting that the Afghan war was the one we needed to win? And didn’t he claim that he, Obama, knew how to do just that?

This story underscores an ongoing pattern: another day, another sign of military and strategic bankruptcy in American policy in the Greater Middle East. From Pakistan to Libya it is increasingly difficult to see any sign of a constructive strategic vision for American policy. Dodge, vacillate, and retreat seem to be the order of the day, and nowhere does this look like it’s bringing us any success.

Modi Insists on India’s Need to Grow

Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York this week, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi insisted on his country’s “uncompromising commitment on climate change.” But this statement was not the encouraging sign negotiators prepping for December’s Paris climate summit might have hoped for from the leader of one of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, as Modi also reiterated India’s position that any potential climate deal ought to be implemented “without affecting our ability to meet the development aspirations of humanity.” The Wall Street Journal reports:

In a series of one-on-one meetings in New York with the leaders of the U.S., France and Britain on Monday, Mr. Modi resisted efforts to pressure India to cap its carbon emissions, India’s Foreign Ministry said. […]

Mr. Modi’s position Monday suggests India will continue to lead the charge of developing nations that say more prosperous countries, that have burned large amounts of fossil fuels for years, must make large emissions cuts and help poor nations with funding and technical know-how to transition to a more environmentally-friendly growth model.

India has long insisted on its right to grow, telling the world at this time last year that its carbon emissions would rise over the next thirty years even as other nations began preparing plans for reducing emissions. “We need to grow. Our emissions will grow…Our growth cannot be compromised. Poverty must be eliminated immediately”, said Indian environment and forest minister Prakash Javadekar said last summer. Modi seems to be echoing that sentiment heading into Paris.

Moreover, just two months away from the conference, India remains one of 114 countries that has yet to submit its national plan, what the UN calls the Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC). Of those countries who have yet to turn in their INDC (which had a soft deadline way back at the end of March), India is by far the largest emitter, and as such looks to be one of the biggest hurdles delegates will have to overcome in Paris. Greens hoping for any kind of robust Global Climate Treaty should take note.

Saudis Burn Through Foreign Reserves

Riyadh is burning through its massive trove of foreign reserves at a breathtaking pace, reportedly withdrawing between $50 and $70 billion over the past six months to help pay off its widening budget deficit. Saudi Arabia’s military involvement in Yemen is pressuring its budget, and, of course, cheap crude has dramatically changed the petrostate’s fiscal outlook. Bloomberg:

“Foreign-exchange reserve depletion, rather than accumulation, is the new reality for Saudi Arabia,” Jason Tuvey, Middle East economist at Capital Economics, said in an e-mailed note Monday. “None of this should come as much surprise,” given the current-account deficit and risk of capital flight, he said […]

While foreign-exchange reserves could sustain the country for years, analysts have said that using them to avoid further cost-cutting could put its credit rating at risk. The Saudi government, so far, has been short on specifics on how it will reduce spending, though planners are said to be considering measures long viewed as off-limits or unnecessary, including phasing out fuel subsidies and investing in renewable energy.

Saudi Arabia’s breakeven oil price—the price at which it needs to sell its crude in order to balance its budget—is estimated to be somewhere in the range of $105 per barrel, but with the market flooded with new sources of crude, the likelihood of a significant rebound from current sub-$50 levels seems slim.

The Saudis have strong-armed OPEC into following a do-nothing strategy in the face of the price plunge, choosing to endure the bargain prices and fight for market share instead of cutting production to set a price floor, as the cartel has done in the past. Riyadh has committed itself to a high-stakes game of chicken with upstart U.S. shale producers, hoping the high cost of fracking will make American companies blink first. There are signs of strain everywhere you look in the U.S. shale industry, but, as this story shows, the costs are mounting for the Saudis as well, and the IMF warned that the Saudi budget deficit could balloon to 20 percent of GDP this year.

Soaking the Rich Won’t Work

Peter Orzsag, director of the Office of Management and Budget for two years under President Obama, is out with a new paper with a conclusion that is sure to disappoint the increasingly restive Bernie Sanders wing of his former boss’s party: Jacking up the top marginal tax rate barely has any effect on income inequality. Orzsag and two Brookings colleagues, William G. Gale and Melissa S. Kearney, calculated how the U.S. income distribution would change if the top rate increased to 50 percent from 39.6 percent and the new revenue were redistributed to the poorest fifth of households. They found that such a shift would barely make a dent in the Gini coefficient (a standard metric that expresses the level of income inequality as a decimal between zero and one). Orzsag, Gale and Kearney write in their report:

Increasing the top rate to 45 percent would bring in an additional $49.4 billion in revenue. Dividing that evenly among the 36.1 million households in the bottom income quintile (defined over households) would give each of those households an additional $1,370 in post-tax income.

Increasing the top rate to 50 percent with the same redistribution scheme would bring in an additional $95.6 billion in revenue, leading to an additional $2,650 in post-tax income for the bottom fifth of households. Applying a new top rate of 50 percent to income above $1 million for married filers and above $750,000 for single filers would bring in an additional $63.5 billion in revenue, which would result in $1,760 in additional post-tax income for households in the lowest quintile.The reduction in income inequality resulting from each of these tax and redistributive plans is quite modest. The Gini coefficient falls from .574 under the current income tax schedule to .567, .560, and .565 respectively. These are very small reductions in the calculated statistic: .007, .015, and .010, under the three tax increase scenarios.

By way of comparison, when the top marginal rate on earned income was 50 percent in 1979, the Gini coefficient was .435. Thanks to globalization and new technologies—and a whole range of economic and demographic changes that we refer to as the decline of the blue model—the economy delivers much more unequal returns now than it did then, and there may not be a whole lot that the government can do to reverse that shift without enacting truly confiscatory taxes (which, to be fair, is what Bernie Sanders has said he wants to do).

As the authors note, the study itself doesn’t necessarily argue against raising the top income tax rate—one could argue that this is the best way to get new revenue to tackle the deficit, for example, or to alleviate poverty. But if the concern is inequality—the overall gap between the income going to the people at various percentiles of the income distribution—then simply hiking the top tax rate is the wrong way to go. If rising inequality really is really as serious a problem as liberals say it is (and most voters don’t think so) then they need to start offering more innovative solutions than simply soaking the rich.

A Green-Eyed Monster Hit

It’s not every day that you learn something new about a 125 year old opera based on a 400 year old play. But the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Verdi’s Otello, directed by Bartlett Sher, is a revelation. The first production of the 2015-2016 season, given the red-carpet treatment at a glittering premiere, was panned by the first-night critics—and those critics are wrong. It has been called “tentative” and “conceptual rather than believable.” In fact, it’s is dramatically bold and vocally beautiful, and it makes an arrestingly original contribution to the appreciation of Verdi. I strongly recommend you see it if you can (Sept. 21-Oct. 17 and April 20-May 6; tickets $27-460) or view it on HD in theaters (Oct. 17 and 21, worldwide).

To understand this production you have to do something critics don’t do often enough, which is to go back to the original material and the core of the composer’s concept. Better than most critics, Sher engages with the opera’s sources, and the strengths (and weaknesses) of the production arise organically from Verdi’s influences and intentions. 

Everybody knows the story of Shakespeare’s Othello. When we see a Moorish general in the Venetian service on Cyprus, a man beset by jealousy as his supposed friend whispers poison into his ear, a loving wife being told to wake up and pray by her husband, half out of his mind or more, who’s holding a pillow—we know at once whom we’re seeing. We know his back story, his strengths and flaws and tragic end, no matter what part of the story we meet him in.

Verdi knew his audience would already be intimately familiar with his hero, and he used this to sharpen and focus his opera. He cut much of the exposition that Shakespeare needed to draw Othello’s character. One extended, opening chorus establishes Otello’s credentials as a military leader and hero, and a famous love duet at the end of his first act makes clear the hero’s back-story and his passion for Desdemona. (This duet was accompanied by a short, lyric solo by principal cellist Jerry Grossman that drove its ache and longing right into the bone.) But because Shakespeare’s creation is so well-known, that’s all the groundwork the composer had to lay. Verdi was free therefore to focus the rest of his opera with unrelenting intensity on Otello’s corruption by Iago, his descent into evil delusion, and his psychological torture and murder of his wife. As Verdi also eliminates Shakespeare’s side-plots, the opera is highly concentrated, taking only a tight two and a half hours (plus intermission) to stage.

But there were other influences at work on Verdi besides Shakespeare, and other ideas that he and his librettist, Arrigo Boito, a notable poet in his own right, brought to the table. Foremost among these are the influence of Wagner, and Verdi’s own romantic focus on the consuming passions of the three main characters, expressed in his dark, powerful, naturalistic music. It is on these aspects of the opera, rather than the Shakespearean roots, that this production drew most heavily. The great accomplishment of Sher’s production is that it illuminates the Wagner-Verdi connection that lies behind the opera musically, just as Shakespeare lies behind the opera dramatically.

Sher’s Otello is staged not in the 16th century, but at the time of the opera’s composition, the late 19th century. And while the setting is still nominally Cyprus, many visual cues suggest a northern setting. Sher claims to have drawn heavily on Ibsen (“of whom,” the Financial Times laconically notes, “the erudite Boito was aware if not necessarily a documented admirer.”) The costumes, by Catherine Zuber, are extremely dark, somewhat modernized variants of 19th-century court dress. Otello and his men dress primarily in blacks, purples, and dark reds. While there are occasional flashes of light—Desdemona’s arresting white and red dresses, the white outfits of some native Cypriots, and the gilded glitter of visiting Ambassadors—overall, northern twilight, rather than the sunlight that bathes Cyprus, prevails. Night is always close at hand. So too is the sea. Behind the set (of which more below) hangs a screen onto which computerized waves, designed by Luke Halls, are projected. They are green-black, reminiscent of North and Baltic Seas rather than the Mediterranean, and their endless rolling reinforces the isolation of the island and those on it.

Because these visual cues point north, you’re confronted again and again by the opera’s relationship to Wagner—an aspect usually buried under superficial differences. Though Verdi vehemently denied it, the influence of his German rival is hard to miss in the music of Otello. Like the works of Wagner, it is through-composed, which is to say there are not separately defined arias and choruses, but rather the melody flows endlessly from one piece into the next. This has been noted before; what’s new here, though, is that the production allows you also to see the dramatic resemblances between the works of the two titans of 19th century opera. Trapped by the sea and tormented by his own demons, Otello strongly resembles Wagner’s Flying Dutchman. Desdemona, for her part, parallels Senta, the woman the hero loves but does not trust.

The role of Otello is musically much more like a Wagnerian heldentenor part than one usually sees in Italian opera—and it’s also strikingly difficult. Aleksandr Antonenko is a veteran in this part: he was recruited personally and trained for 18 months by Riccardo Muti to perform Otello at the Salzburg Festival in 2008. Both in his singing and his acting, Antonenko emphasizes Otello’s martial and heroic aspects, which slowly morph into possessiveness, jealousy, and unhinged violence. The flaws in our hero are much more visible from the start in Verdi then they are in Shakespeare. And because this production doesn’t look like Shakespeare, it at times loses touch with the associations with the play’s more carefully drawn character—associations that Verdi might have been relying on to soften his hero’s image.

Antonenko himself looks more like the Flying Dutchman than Shakespeare’s Othello: the tenor is Lithuanian, and foreswore the traditional makeup for the “Moorish” Otello due to the ugly historic connotations of blackface. This isn’t simply an exercise in cultural sensitivity; the decision derives from, and enhances, the production’s interpretation of Antonenko’s role.

The Nordic connection is also reinforced by the Es Devlin-designed set, which consists of large, ice-like glass partitions, semi-frosted but still transparent, that slide around to form the walls of the palace and the gardens. Inside them are staircases and passageways—one can see Iago spying and scheming or Otello just failing to miss a crucial piece of information as he eavesdrops.

Devlin is one of Met manager Peter Gelb’s outside-the-box picks—her resume includes Beyonce concerts and the closing ceremonies of the London Olympics as well as Don Giovanni at London’s Royal Opera House and Faust at the Semperoper. Her set is where the production is at its most conceptual. As Devlin explained at a preview at the Guggenheim’s Works and Process series, she derived the idea from a letter Boito wrote to Verdi, in which the librettist applauded the composer that Verdi for entrapping his characters in an ever-closing prism. Likewise, Sher and Devlin use the moving walls to close in on Otello as the psychological pressure from Iago intensifies, particularly in Act 2. It’s very clever—but I wonder how accessible it is to someone who hasn’t been briefed beforehand.

All of these changes offer rare insights into the opera Otello—but they also take us away from Shakespeare’s Othello. Much like an impressionist painter, Sher has emphasized provocative, potentially under-appreciated aspects of its subject at the price of the aspects and proportions he’s not focusing on. If you go in expecting to see a musical version of Shakespeare’s play, you’re going to be disappointed or even angered; if you’re prepared to see an interpretation of Verdi’s opera, you’ll find it provocative in the best sense. 

You’ll also find it aurally gorgeous; there’s more going on here than a dramatized critical essay on Verdi and Wagner. The Met’s orchestra, conducted for this production by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, is superb throughout. The French-Canadian leader of the Philadelphia Orchestra brings extraordinary verve and clarity to Verdi, who often suffers from being muddled.

And the two other co-stars, along with Antonenko, make significant, interesting contributions. The part of Iago is often cast as a young, ambitious, even visually serpentine archetype of jealousy. But Serbian baritone Željko Lučić depicts him instead as a superannuated ensign, twisted by aspirations that have clearly been thwarted, almost banal in his evil. The resulting creation is menacingly familiar—he could be plotting against you from the office next door. Lučić’s star turn is the aria “Credo in un dio crudel” (I believe in a cruel God), which he delivers superbly in rich, menacing tones.

Meanwhile, one of the high points of this opera is getting to see and hear its third star, the Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva, as Desdemona. Up until the last act, when there is no hope, Yoncheva’s Desdemona is full of life, her powerful yet sweet voice filling the hall to match her husband’s or Iago’s, stating her case patiently but with great dignity, refusing to go quietly into that good night. This in turn shows a side of the hero that’s easy to gloss over in Shakespeare: the wife-beating caudillo, who is not merely content to murder secretly but abuses openly. In many ways, one realizes, this production, with its emphasis on isolation and psychological pressure, embodies Desdemona’s view of Otello.

While the production is vocally beautiful and visually interesting, the psychological intensity, Sher’s Wagnerian setting, and the performances of Yoncheva and Antonenko combine to make this at times one of the bleakest operas I’ve ever seen. In particular, the second and third acts—which, probably not coincidentally, are visually the furthest removed from the cues that remind you of Shakespeare’s Othello—are not only extremely dark, but increasingly hopeless. At the end of the third act, you feel like you’ve stared into the abyss long enough that it’s now staring back into you.

Nothing you’ve seen so far prepares you for what’s about to come: a transcendently beautiful fourth act that ties everything back together. It reunites the Shakespearean Othello with this new and unexpected Wagnerian Otello we have been seeing; it sublimates the isolation and pathos of the performance into true tragic catharsis.

The set is stripped down to just the sea-screen, bare boards, and a bed, prie-dieu, and nightstand. Yoncheva’s talent is on full display during two of the finest pieces in the soprano repetoire: the “Willow Song,” which Desdemona, dreading being left alone, sings to her maid, and the “Ave Maria” as she kneels in one final prayer. Yoncheva is lyric, pathetic, soft in tone and yet resonant in volume when needed—it’s masterful.

For his part, Antonenko saved the softest and most romantic tones in his voice for his sung conversation with his wife just before he kills her, a startling and highly effective decision that underlines the tragic irony of the tale. And the concluding baccio moment, as a dying Otello begs the dead Desdemona for one last kiss, left not an eye dry, including mine. 

At the end, the beauty of Verdi’s music and the pathos of Shakespeare’s plot overwhelms everything. The audience burst to their feat at the end of the performance in a long, spontaneous, standing ovation, with enthusiasm rarely seen at the Met. I, too, joined them.

It’s easy to view Italian opera, and in particularly the smooth-as-silk music of Verdi, as prettified, light entertainment, requiring less preparation on the part of the audience than the overtly intellectual Wagner or the “serious” tragedies of Shakespeare. (As Walter Russell Mead wrote this weekend, this misperception has been a cross opera in general has had to bear in the English-speaking world.) But as this production illustrates perfectly, Verdi was more than a prattling tunesmith—he was a deep and serious thinker. Few people could add something to Shakespeare, or stand on equal terms with Wagner. Verdi did.

And Sher’s production shows it. It’s startling, tragic, and sublimely beautiful. Run, don’t walk.

Future of Immigration Much More Asian Than You Think

New research from the Pew Foundation indicates the future of immigration to the U.S. is shifting even more toward Asia than had previous been expected. The Financial Times reports.

The research finds that the driver of US population growth over the next five decades will be immigration from Asian countries such as China, India, Korea and the Philippines, with the expansion overtaking arrivals of Hispanics.

By 2065, Asians are projected to become the largest immigrant group, at 38 per cent of the immigrant population, surpassing Hispanics, at 31 per cent. Overall, the immigrant population will reach 78m by 2065, compared with 45m today, with a growth rate double that of the US-born population.

So almost as soon as it was supposed to have begun, the Hispanic term as the largest minority in the U.S. may be at an end. These figures have ramifications from electoral politics (Republicans in particular, who lag behind on Asians even when other demographic factors say they shouldn’t, should seriously start considering how to appeal to these constituencies) through to policy decisions on schooling, visas, and much more besides.

But if there is one thing we know for sure, it is that long term immigration forecasts are usually deeply wrong. Along those lines, some of the assumptions underlying the Pew study need to be questioned. Chief among them are the straight-line nature of its projections:

The report from the Pew Research Center finds that foreign-born individuals and their children will comprise 36 per cent of the US population by 2065, higher than the peaks reached at the beginning of the 20th century and up from 26 per cent now. The ranks of foreign-born individuals alone will also rise to a record.[..]

The Pew projections extrapolate from recent migration trends, and so are susceptible to unexpected changes in US economic fortunes and legislation, as well as those of other big countries.

The last time immigration went this high, as Nicholas M. Gallagher has written in these pages, the public insisted on tough immigration quotas that remained in place for decades. It would be foolish for anyone to make policy assumptions based on the U.S. hitting 150% of current immigration levels without predicting other major changes in the political sphere, whatever form those might take.

The new data indicates that the future is very much up for grabs. But the one thing we know about immigration patters is that… they change.