As the Republican establishment holds its breath in Tampa waiting for tropical storm Isaac to decide what it wants to do, I couldn't help remembering another hurricane, the fictional one that threatens to ravage the city of Mahagonny at the end of act 1 of Brecht's and Weill's great opera. It is the scene in which Mahagonny turns toward the Republican ideology—toward the deregulation of everything except for the crime of lacking money.*
The American tenor Elliot Palay as Paul Ackermann (aka Jimmy Mahoney) in the act 1 finale of Joachim Herz's production of Der Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny at the Komische
Oper in East Berlin 1977. Titles provided by Elliot
Palay.
*As in: if abortion is illegal, rich girls will still have abortions; they'll just go to Switzerland to get them, as their foremothers did before them.
