The Death of Klinghoffer

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Work data
Title: The Death of Klinghoffer
Original language: English
Music: John Adams
Libretto : Alice Goodman
Premiere: March 19, 1991
Place of premiere: La Monnaie , Brussels
Playing time: approx. 140 minutes
Place and time of the action: On board the cruiser Achille Lauro , a few hours off the port of Alexandria, 1985
people

The Death of Klinghoffer is an opera by John Adams (composition) and Alice Goodman (libretto) about the kidnapping of the cruise ship Achille Lauro by terrorists of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1985. The 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer was murdered, an American Jewish faith, who was dependent on a wheelchair. The idea for the opera came from director Peter Sellars , who, like choreographer Mark Morris, also played a key role in the concept. The clients were five American and European opera houses, including the San Francisco Opera and the Brooklyn Academy of Music . Because of its topic, the Middle East conflict , the work is politically very controversial. Critics, including Klinghoffer's two daughters, consider it anti-Semitic and glorifying terrorism . Due to massive protests, the New York Metropolitan Opera refrained from broadcasting a performance in cinemas worldwide in 2014.

action

prolog

Two choirs meet in the prologue, the “Choir of the Palestinians in Exile” and the “Choir of the Jews in Exile”. Both sing about their people and their history.

first act

The nameless captain of the MS Achille Lauro remembers the kidnapping. Shortly before, most of the passengers in Egypt had disembarked to visit the pyramids . The ship had set sail again to pick up the shore leave later. The kidnappers had used the port stay to go on board. After taking control of the bridge, the remaining passengers had to gather in the restaurant. A grandmother from Switzerland is traveling with her grandson, the parents are among the guests who booked the pyramid excursion. The first officer with the fictional name Giordano Bruno informs the captain of the kidnapping and that a waiter was injured. The officer and the captain try to calm the passengers down. Molqui, one of the kidnappers, explains what is happening to everyone present. The captain and Molqui have an argument, the captain orders food and drinks to be brought and offers Molqui to choose the food.

The second scene is opened by the "Ocean Choir". The kidnapper Mahmoud is guarding the captain. Mahmoud looks back on his youth and the songs that were on the radio at the time. The captain addressed the Middle East conflict and expressed the view that individuals on both sides, Palestinians and Jews, could meet and try to understand each other. Mahmoud denies that. The "Austrian" has locked herself in the cabin and has disappeared during the further kidnapping. The “night choir” concludes the first act.

Second act

The “Hagar Choir” quotes the biblical story of Hagar and Ishmael , which is also passed down in Islamic tradition as the legend of Hagar and the angel - the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which also resulted in the kidnapping. Molqui is frustrated that his demands have not been answered. Mahmoud threatens all passengers with death. Leon Klinghoffer asserts that he normally wants to be left in peace and leads a simple and decent life, but insults the kidnappers. The third kidnapper, Rambo, responds with curses on Jews and Americans. A British dancer remembers how courteously she and everyone else were treated by the kidnapper Omar, so she was allowed to smoke. Omar longs for martyrdom. He clashes with Molqui, who then takes Klinghoffer away. The "desert choir" closes the first scene.

Marilyn Klinghoffer sings about disability, illness and death. She believes her husband was taken to the infirmary. The kidnappers pressured the captain to shoot a passenger every fifteen minutes. The captain then makes himself available as the next victim. Molqui appears and announces the death of Klinghoffer, who was shot (not visible on the stage). Klinghoffer bids farewell to this world with the "Aria of the Falling Body" ( Gymnopaedie ) . The body and wheelchair were thrown into the sea by the ship's hairdresser and a waiter on the orders of the terrorists. The “day choir” leads over to the final scene.

After the kidnappers have given up and the surviving passengers disembarked, the only thing left for the captain to do is to inform Marilyn Klinghoffer of her husband's death. She insults the captain because, in her opinion, he has smiled at the kidnappers. In her grief, she wishes she had been shot in place of her husband.

Instrumentation

The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:

Work history

After the great success of Nixon in China (1987), the first joint project by Peter Sellars, Alice Goodman and Adams, Sellars proposed the opera The Death of Klinghoffer in 1988 . He called the work a "meditation". Sellars wanted to trace the historical and ideological background to the kidnapping, which "dominated the news for two weeks": "For this we needed a more spacious medium than newspapers or television." This is how the tension between Muslims and Jews who are at war is analyzed although both are monotheistic religions and the common historical tradition is evident. This is made clear by the dance performance of Hagar and Ishmael, who, in contrast to the Old Testament , play an important role in Islamic tradition : Hagar, the second wife of the ancestral father Abraham , comes with him and their son to Mecca and stays there. According to Islamic tradition, the graves of Hagar and Ishmael are said to be on the Kaaba ; Ishmael is considered the religious progenitor of the Arabs . Apart from the title, Sellars initially had no further suggestions.

John Adams was immediately enthusiastic, as he was of the opinion that terrorists had long since received the meaning of modern totems through the media . The project was funded by the decision of the San Francisco Opera to cancel an already placed composition commission to Hugo Weisgall for a biblical “ Esther opera” in favor of The Death of Klinghoffer . Further co-production partners were the premiere theater, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, the Ópera de Lyon, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Los Angeles Festival of the Arts. When composing, Adams said he felt more inspired by sacred music such as that of Johann Sebastian Bach than by Giuseppe Verdi , who had also set current political operas to music at the time. After the Metropolitan Opera New York stopped broadcasting a live worldwide performance over massive protests, Adams said in an interview with the New York Times : “The really ironic and sad fact is that the content of this opera is more relevant in 2014 than it was in 1991 was at the premiere. I believe that the people who are angry and upset about this production are just trying to be in control of their messages. The rejection of the Met has given in to these intimidation attempts. ”The composer had previously affirmed:“ If opera is to have a future, it has to deal with the things that move us. ”This also includes the subject of terrorism. Those who performed The Death of Klinghoffer ultimately need more courage than he, said Adams.

Librettist Alice Goodman , who later converted from Jewish to Christian and has worked as an Anglican pastor in Cambridgeshire since 2006, considers her textbook to be the best she has ever written, regardless of criticism. In any case, she doesn't regret anything: “That's so crazy. You yourself always know when you've done something good, and the funny thing about it - I actually thought everyone else would see it that way. ”When she faxed a few verses from a terrorist's aria to John Adams while she was working, Goodman said, I showed the text to Jewish neighbors. They would have considered the material “anti-Semitic”: “John couldn't imagine that this opera would 'cure' anything. I replied that I was Jewish myself and took the view that the Brooklyn audience would stand up and lynch us if we had smurfed all the Palestinians. John thought about it and came to the conclusion that I was right. "

reception

After the American premiere, John Rockwell wrote in the New York Times that only the second act restored his faith in “the creative abilities of the team”: “The potential for an eventual triumph is there.” The audience responded friendly, but with “ strangely abbreviated applause ”. In contrast, New York Magazine noted that talking about The Death of Klinghoffer was more fun than watching the opera. A lot of political problems are discussed, but overall “not much comes out” of the opera and it is boring. Tom Sutcliffe, in his book Believing in Opera, expresses the view that opera was written to "purify" the American conscience. Musically, the score, which is little influenced by minimal music , reminds him of Pyotr Tchaikovsky , Richard Wagner and Benjamin Britten . Klinghoffer's daughters, Lisa and Ilsa, had attended the New York premiere in 1991 and afterwards said in a written statement: "The comparison of the plight of the Palestinian people and the cold-blooded murder of an innocent, disabled American Jew is historically naive and annoying." After the director of the Met, Peter Gelb , decided in June 2014 not to broadcast a performance in cinemas as planned, he justified this decision with the reference that “in times of growing anti-Semitism, especially in Europe”, this was “ inappropriate ”. Nevertheless, the opera is "not anti-Semitic". After the London production in 2012, David Karlin came to the conclusion that despite all the weaknesses of the work, the “elegiac, unforgettable and hypnotic” music is “wonderful” and the subject is exceptional for the opera genre: your concern is “noble”, namely both sides of the Middle Food conflict to show, but the execution too superficial. The Hollywood Reporter considers The Death of Klinghoffer to be the best work by John Adams and praised a performance in Long Beach in 2014 that the opera changed the behavior of listeners and contemporary witnesses of the Middle East conflict and called for civil discourse. The music is “unique” and sustainable, the text is full of poetry. Alex Ross, the New Yorker's music critic, wrote in 2014 that anyone who claims opera glorifies political murder has not seen it to the end. The work is now entering "exceptionally dangerous terrain", playing with "stereotypes" on both sides and therefore nobody should be surprised that it remains controversial.

The German premiere in 1997 was commented on by the Nürnberger Zeitung with the remark that the production directed by Barbara Beyer “did not go beyond the statics of an oratorio”. About the Wuppertal production in March 2005, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that it was not only the "idea to film the seven commenting choirs, which were pantomimed in the original production by the choreographer Mark Morris," that impressed: "That on the development A media project in Wuppertal , dedicated to youth aesthetics , had young people of different nationalities - Israelis, Palestinians and Americans - produce videos that fit the choirs in terms of duration and style. This is a sensible attempt to overcome prejudices in aesthetic work. "The opera world wrote:" Adams' opera is not about the meticulous representation of a catastrophe, but about reflection. "

Performances

A full list of performances can be found on the Boosey & Hawkes website .

literature

  • Bálint András Varga: The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste: Reflections on New Music. Rochester (New York) 2017.

Web links

  • The story of The Death of Klinghoffer on Opera-Guide landing page due to URL change currently unavailable

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Work information from Boosey & Hawkes , accessed on May 22, 2018.
  2. ^ David Littlejohn: The Ultimate Art: Essays Around and about Opera. Los Angeles 1992, p. 57.
  3. ↑ Singing Terrorists: "The Death of Klinghoffer". In: Der Tagesspiegel , October 22, 2014, accessed on May 22, 2018.
  4. ^ Tom Sutcliffe: Believing in Opera. Princeton (New Jersey) 1996, p. 201.
  5. ^ Peter Sellars : Peter Sellars: "The United States is coming close to censorship". In: The Guardian , November 20, 2014, accessed May 22, 2018.
  6. Jump up ↑ Michael K. Bohn: The Achille Lauro Hijacking: Lessons in the Politics and Prejudice of Terrorism. Dulles (Virginia) 2004, p. 141.
  7. ↑ Richard Taruskin : Music in the Late Twentieth Century: The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford 2005, p. 517.
  8. Jump up ↑ Michael K. Bohn: The Achille Lauro Hijacking: Lessons in the Politics and Prejudice of Terrorism. Dulles (Virginia) 2004, p. 141.
  9. ↑ Michael Cooper: 'Klinghoffer' Composer Responds to Met's Decision. In: The New York Times, June 18, 2014, accessed May 22, 2018.
  10. ^ Bálint András Varga: The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste: Reflections on New Music. Rochester (New York) 2017, p. 31.
  11. ↑ a b Stuart Jeffries: The furore that finished me. Interview with Alice Goodman . In: The Guardian , January 29, 2012, accessed May 22, 2018.
  12. ↑ Linda Winer: Opera Out of Terrorism: Peter Sellars, John Adams and Alice Goodman, the creators of "Nixon in China", are at it again with "The Death of Klinghoffer". In: Los Angeles Times , June 16, 2003, accessed May 22, 2018.
  13. ↑ John Rockwell: Review / Opera; From an Episode of Terrorism, Adams's "Death of Klinghoffer". In: The New York Times , 1991, accessed May 22, 2018.
  14. ↑ Peger G. Davis: Static Klinghoffer. In: New York Magazine , September 30, 1991.
  15. ^ Tom Sutcliffe: Believing in Opera. Princeton (New Jersey) 1996, p. 205.
  16. ↑ Priscilla Frank: Met Opera Director Peter Gelb Responds To Controversy Surrounding 'The Death of Klinghoffer'. In: The Huffington Post , October 16, 2014, accessed May 22, 2018.
  17. ↑ David Karlin: The Death of Klinghoffer at ENO on bachtrack.com, February 22, 2012, accessed on May 22, 2018.
  18. ^ Myron Meisel: Opera Review: The Death of Klinghoffer. In: The Hollywood Reporter , March 19, 2014, accessed May 22, 2018.
  19. ↑ Alex Ross: The Met's “Klinghoffer” Problem. In: The New Yorker , June 24, 2014, accessed May 22, 2018.
  20. ^ Thomas Heinold: Drama about atomic bombs and atomic bombs. In: Nürnberger Zeitung , March 4, 2009, accessed on May 22, 2018.
  21. ↑ Ulrich Schreiber : Anyone who discusses loses the meaning of life. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , March 23, 2005, quoted from mezzosopranistin.de, accessed on May 22, 2018.
  22. ↑ Notes from the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes (PDF), accessed on May 22, 2018.
  23. ↑ Complete listing at Boosey & Hawkes .