I first heard about "Klinghoffer" when the Met announced its 2014-15 season. I saw the title of the opera on their list of productions and did not recognize it, so I looked it up online. Little did I know I would be entering a wormhole of controversy and anger.
The opera is about the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship by a group from the PLO. Their only victim was an American Jew named Leon Klinghoffer, who they shot and then tossed his body off the side of the ship. Right from that brief description it became clear that the opera had been a perpetual source of controversy since it premiered in 1991.
I read all sorts of things: Richard Taruskin's article about why the BSO was right to cancel its performances of the choral pieces following 9/11, an interview with Alice Goodman in "The Guardian" explaining her conversion to Christianity (from Judaism) and how she never wrote another libretto again after "Klinghoffer", and pieces that discussed Klinghoffer's daughters' aversion to the piece. Many claimed the opera was anti-Semitic and glorified terrorism. I knew I had to see it and find out for myself. I also knew that segments of NYC's Jewish community would soon reawaken debate on this opera.
It started during the summer when Abraham Foxman of the ADL and Peter Gelb struck a deal that would cancel the HD Broadcast of the opera for fears of fanning anti-Semitism abroad. This concession was extremely odd because Gelb has maintained all along that the opera lacks anti-Semitism and Foxman even said that there's none of it in the piece. To think that international audiences would see things differently is kind of patronizing. But at least the MET didn't cancel the performances outright.
Still dissatisfied with Gelb, many right-wing and traditional Jewish organizations mounted a couple protests against the opera. One was at the Met's opening night, when Klinghoffer wasn't even being performed (it was Marriage of Figaro, I think)! The next one happened on Klinghoffer's premiere night. Hundreds of (mostly) orthodox Jews showed up to protest, some sitting symbolically in wheelchairs to send the message that "We are all Leon Klinghoffer."
I hope that the protesters were more thoughtful than the speakers who spoke at the protest. Rudy Giuliani started things off, and he was actually somewhat reasonable, letting people know that he had actually listened to the opera and read the libretto. He didn't approve of its message and said the Met had made a "grave mistake" in staging it, but at least came to the podium with an informed opinion.
The speakers got weirder after that. Michael Mukasy said that viewers of "Klinghoffer" were otherwise decent people who were paralyzed by the word art and that this art made people stop thinking. Ronald Lauter said that the opera would be used by the enemy of Jews abroad to say that even Americans side with terrorists. Benjamin Brafman said that Lincoln Center would forever be stained with the same stain as Auschwitz. Rep. Elliot Engel compared "Klinghoffer" to Hamas. Gov. David Patterson said that viewers of Klinghoffer, even if they weren't terrorists, sure helped them by seeing the piece. Another speaker said that Klinghoffer was an operatic Kristallnacht.
The reducto ad hitlerum was most apparent by the yellow stars each speaker had affixed to his jacket. The only somewhat effective moment at the protest was when an Israeli musician led the crowd in HaTikvah and Am Yisrael Chai. If you're protesting a musical performance, countering with music is probably more effective than countering with over-the-top and borderline-offensive Holocaust rhetoric.
I went to the protests as an observer, not a participant, and was planning on seeing the opera with a friend later in the week. As I was leaving the protest I ran into someone I knew, who told me that it was good to be there supporting the cause. I told him that I was extremely skeptical of the speeches. He told me that the speeches didn't matter and that demonstrating support (esp. for the Klinghoffer daughters) is what was important. He saw the protests through a traditional Jewish peoplehood lens: when Jews are threatened (no matter the threat) we have to stand up, call it out, and defend ourselves. After a traumatizing summer with the third Gaza War and rising anti-Semitism in Europe, it is totally understandable why there would be increased sensitivity.
But "Klinghoffer" seems like such a misplaced target. Indeed, very few of the protesters had actually listened to the opera or read the libretto. They quoted lines that the terrorists sing as proof that the opera itself is anti-Semitic when in context, it's clear that those lines are being sung by violent terrorists. It appeared to me that "Klinghoffer" was an easy punching bag for all these pent-up frustrations since the summer, a much easier punching bag than the media, the American government, European governments, Hamas, the Israeli government, and more.
There will be a forthcoming post featuring my review of the opera itself. Spoiler alert: it was not anti-Semitic.
No comments:
Post a Comment