Et tu, Wall Street Journal.
Heidi Waleson opens her review of the controversial opera: “The
Death of Klinghoffer” thusly:
John
Adams’s opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” (1991) is not anti-Semitic or
anti-Israel. It does not condone terrorism. Tom Morris’s powerful production
that opened at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday (it had its debut at the
English National Opera in 2012) makes those things eminently clear by delving
beyond the sometimes obscure, baroque text of Alice Goodman’s libretto to
arrive at the musical heart of the work, which is about the depth of historical
resentment, and how it drives people to commit heinous acts. The crowd of
ranting protesters corralled by police barricades in the park opposite Lincoln
Center had clearly never heard the piece, and the tacky disruptions inside the
theater—a few shouts—seemed irrelevant to what was happening onstage.
One wonders what makes Waleson such an authority on the
subject of anti-Semitism.
Commenters on the Journal website were not fooled by her naïve
pronouncement. They immediately identified Waleson’s own anti-Israeli bias. You can
see it yourself in her opening paragraph.
She says that the “crowd of ranting protesters”
was “corralled by police barricades….” Not only is the word "ranting" highly derogatory. It does not describe the attitude of the demonstrators, led by numerous distinguished public officials. And then, doesn’t the verb “corralled” give it
away? The protesters were the kinds of animals that needed
to be “corralled.”
Surely, reducing human beings to out-of-control, dangerous
animals is an old anti-Semitic trope.
Dare we mention that if the opera was about the Prophet
Mohammed, the Met would NEVER have allowed it to be performed.
Somehow or other Waleson believes that “historical
resentment… drives people to commit heinous acts.” What makes her an authority on human motivation?
As it happens, and as many of have noted, the opera’s title
is not The Murder of Klinghoffer or The Execution of Klinghoffer. By calling it
The Death of Klinghoffer the composer has whitewashed the fact that a Jewish
man was executed because he was Jewish.
One is appalled to see this sleight-of-hand in a newspaper
where Daniel Pearl used to work.
The fault for Palestinian terrorism, Waleson suggests,
lays with the Israelis. Waleson says not a word about the hundreds of thousands
of Jews who were expelled from Arab countries and who do not bear any
resentment for the nations that stole their property and forced them to leave.
She has not a word for the Palestinian leadership that, most recently, has
preferred to spend international aid money on rockets and terror tunnels, rather
than for the benefit of the Palestinian people.
With her opening paragraph Waleson has revealed her own
bias. She has, dare I say, been seduced by the anti-Israeli propaganda
represented in this opera.
Evidently, Waleson is incapable of seeing propaganda for what
it is. For that we turn to someone who is a great opera lover, but not an opera
critic. That would be Alan Dershowitz, an emeritus professor who is, dare we
say, biased in favor of Israel. One needs to say it that way, but it is a bad
sign that we feel compelled to say that someone who defends the state of Israel
against anti-Semitic propaganda and terrorist actions has a “bias.”
As I said, Dershowitz is not an opera critic. Nevertheless,
his comments ring more true than those of addled opera critic Waleson.
Dershowitz writes:
By any
standard, The Death of
Klinghoffer, is anything but the “masterpiece” its proponents are
claiming it is. The music is uneven, with some lovely choruses—more on that
coming—one decent aria, and lots of turgid recitatives. The libretto is awful.
The drama is confused and rigid, especially the weak device of the captain
looking back at the events several years later with the help of several silent
passengers. There are silly and distracting arias from a British show girl who
seems to have had a crush on one of the terrorists, as well as from a woman who
hid in her cabin eating grapes and chocolate. They added neither to the
drama nor the music of the opera.
In the opera there are dueling choruses, expressing the
Palestinian and Israeli points of view. Apparently, these choruses are not
equivalent; they do not even draw a moral equivalence. As Dershowitz puts it, they
demean and diminish Jews while glorifying the Palestinian point
of view.
He writes:
The
Palestinian chorus is beautifully composed musically, with some compelling
words, sung rhythmically and sympathetically. The Jewish chorus is a mishmash
of whining about money, sex, betrayal and assorted “Hasidim” protesting in
front of movie theaters. It never mentions the six million Jews who were
murdered in the Holocaust, though the chorus is supposed to be sung by its
survivors. The goal of that narrative chorus is to compare the displacement of
700,000 Palestinians—some of which was caused by Arab leaders urging them to
leave and return victoriously after the Arabs murdered the Jews of Israel—with
the systematic genocide of six million Jews. It was a moral abomination.
Dershowitz adds, importantly, that the opera does not portray Klinghoffer being executed because he was Jewish. It shows him being murdered because he was a loudmouth who spoke ill of Palestinians.
We give the last word on this subject to Judea Pearl, father
of Daniel Pearl:
I
submit to you that there has never been a crime in human history lacking
grievance and motivation. The 9/11 lunatics had profound motivations, and the
murderers of my son, Daniel Pearl, had very compelling "grievances.”
In the
past few weeks we have seen with our own eyes that Hamas and ISIS have
grievances, too and, they, too, are lining up for operatic productions with the
Met.
There
is nothing more enticing to a would-be terrorist than the prospect of
broadcasting his "grievences" in Lincoln Center, the icon of
American culture.
Yet
civilized society, from the time of our caveman ancestors, has learned to
protect itself by codifying right from wrong, separating the holy from the
profane, distinguishing that which deserves the sound of orchestras from that
which deserves our unconditional revulsion. The Met has smeared this
distinction and thus betrayed their contract with society.
I
submit to you that choreographing an operatic drama around criminal pathology
is not an artistic prerogative, but a blatant betrayal of public trust.
We do
not stage operas for rapists and child molesters, and we do not compose
symphonies for penetrating the minds of ISIS executioners.
No!
Composer John Adams, some sides do not have two sides, and what was done
to Leon Klinghoffer has one side only.
What we
are seeing here in New York today is not an artistic expression that challenges
the limits of morality, but a moral deformity that challenges the limits of the
art.
This
opera is not about the mentality of deranged terrorists, but about the judgment
of our arts directors. The New York Met has squandered humanity's greatest
treasure — our moral compass, our sense of right and wrong, and, most sadly,
our reverence for music as a noble expression of the human spirit.
We
might be able some day to forgive the Met for de-criminalizing brutal minds,
but we will never forgive them for poisoning our music -- for turning our best
violins and our iconic concert halls into mega-phones for excusing evil.
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