The Death of Klinghoffer

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The Death of Klinghoffer is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams to an English libretto by the poet Alice Goodman. It was first performed in Brussels, Belgium, in 1991.

The opera tells the true story of the hijacking of the passenger liner Achille Lauro by the Palestine Liberation Front in 1985, and the resulting death of Jewish-American passenger Leon Klinghoffer. It was the center of a great controversy when it was performed in the United States in late 1991 and early 1992. A British Channel 4 television version, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Adams, was directed by Penny Woolcockin 2003. There was also a performance by Scottish Opera at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival.

[edit] The Music

The Death of Klinghoffer is written in a style similar to the minimalist music made popular by composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Adams is inspired by the sacred oratorios of Johann Sebastian Bach, in which intervallic relationships such as affekt are used to evoke certain emotions. Other musical inspirations come from Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. Schoenberg's use of atonality and of sprechstimme provides comic relief when sung by the character of a flamboyant, sneering Austrian woman. The drama is portrayed primarily in long monologues by individual characters, with commentary by the chorus, which does not take part in the action. The monologues occasionally overlap during moments of heightened drama, adding to the confusion of the scene.

The opera's choral passages have been performed and recorded separately as Choruses from Klinghoffer

[edit] The Klinghoffer Controversy

In a page-long article in the December 9, 2001, New York Times Arts and Leisure section, a noted musicologist, Richard Taruskin of The University of California denounced the opera and accused John Adams of "romanticizing terrorists." As he saw it, the opera tended to give many listeners the impression that the Palestinian terrorists were presented as men who were fighting for a noble cause. Many people held the belief that the opera was anti-Semitic, and it was picketed by members of the Jewish Information League at its premiere in San Francisco, California. After September 11, 2001, the work was also criticized as being anti-American, as Taruskin stated that "If terrorism is to be defeated, world public opinion has to be turned decisively against it . . . no longer romanticising terrorists as Robin Hoods and no longer idealising their deeds as rough poetic justice".

Fans of the work tend to disagree with this assessment, since however much sympathy the audience is led to feel for one or two of the hijackers, it cannot help but condemn the terrorist action as a whole. Klinghoffer himself is murdered point-blank on stage, and his wife's horror upon finding out about his murder is conveyed viscerally to the audience as a final impression. Those terrorists who describe their history and motives speak in absolutes of morality, and any connection the audience may feel to their humanity is quickly drowned in words that define the absence of humanity:

"The day that my enemy and I sit peacefully, each putting his cause and working towards peace — that day our hope dies, and I shall die, too."

Many critics of the work feel that simply by allowing terrorists to be portrayed as human beings on stage, Adams has gone too far.^{[citation needed]} However, supporters of the work express that by showing us the terrorists as human beings rather than two-dimensional villains, Adams forces us to confront the societal problems that cause violence, rather than blame only the brainwashed children of that violence.

[edit] Roles

		Premiere, March 19, 1991 (Kent Nagano)
The Captain of the Achille Lauro	baritone	James Maddalena
The First Officer	bass-baritone	Thomas Hammons
'Rambo', a terrorist	bass-baritone	Thomas Hammons
Swiss grandmother	mezzo-soprano	Janice Felty
Austrian woman	mezzo-soprano	Janice Felty
British dancing girl	mezzo-soprano	Janice Felty
Molqi, a terrorist	tenor	Thomas Young
Mamoud, a terrorist	baritone	Eugene Perry
Leon Klinghoffer	baritone	Sanford Sylvan
Omar, a terrorist	mezzo-soprano	Stephanie Friedman
Marilyn Klinghoffer	contralto	Sheila Nader