BWW Reviews: Playing with Fire at the Met's Premiere of John Adams's THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER

Only someone who arrived convinced of the opera's bias could have found the Met's premiere of the John Adams-Alice Goodman THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER to be anti-Semitic. On the other hand, that doesn't mean that it's even-handed.

Particularly when it comes to the music, measure for measure, the Palestinians come out on top, from the sympathetic opening "Chorus of Exiled Palestinians" to the arias for the terrorists and onward. Except for the powerful aria for mezzo Marilyn Klinghoffer that ends the work (sung beautifully by Michaela Martens), whether looking to the past or dealing with the present of the terrorists who capture the luxury Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, Adams simply wrote more nuanced, satisfying music for the Palestinians.

Flawed libretto

That isn't the only problem. The thinking behind the libretto by Goodman can only be described as deeply flawed. It mixes apples and oranges, thus skewing the result. It doesn't, for example, parallel the struggle of the Palestinians versus that of the Jews in the founding of Israel; it chooses instead to pit the Palestinians against a group of tourists on a luxury cruise ship. The result is not a "they said and then they said," but a "they said and 'look at people having fun while our people have suffered.'"

Adams and, particularly, Goodman must have been naïve to think they weren't playing with fire in taking on this subject, in this manner. Unlike Adams's DOCTOR ATOMIC or NIXON IN CHINA, where the politics involved are, for the most part, clearly in the past, KLINGHOFFER and the Arab-Israeli conflict is still a very real, very raw reality. That doesn't mean the creators should have shied away from it--merely that they should have had a better understanding of what they were creating.

Goodman as "uncommissionable"

Goodman, in particular, thought she had written something brilliant. She believed it would mark the start of a thriving career as an opera librettist, according to an interview she gave to The Guardian just before the British premiere of this production three years ago at the English National Opera. Instead, she found herself (in her own words) "uncommissionable." Today, she is a rector with the Church of England (having converted from Judaism). It is interesting to note that she is the only one not afforded a bio in the "Cast and Creative Team" section of the program.

The cast couldn't have been better

The cast couldn't have been better in working with the material put before them. Baritone Paolo Szot was critical in the central role of the Captain of the ship--dramatically, musically strong, but, ultimately in a no-win position since he must lie to bring the ship to port with no further casualties. Alan Opie, also a baritone, brought fire to the role of Klinghoffer; it was too bad that Adams didn't provide him with a more worthy aria than "The Aria of the Falling Body" to better humanize the tragedy of his death. The terrorists were humanized but with their evil sides intact. Bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green as "Rambo" used his bulk and booming voice to terrorize, while Aubrey Allicock, also a bass-baritone, brought some sympathy for Mamoud, who seemed out of his depth in the plot. Tenor Sean Panikkar as Molqui and dancer Jesse Kovarsky also impressed, filling out the quartet of terrorists.

Orchestra's thrilling, thoughtful performance

Conductor David Robertson led the Met Orchestra in a thrilling, thoughtful performance of the piece, and kept the complex story as cohesive as possible in Tom Morris's production. The physical production by Tom Pye, on the other hand, was one of the ugliest within memory, except for the video designed by Finn Ross and sound by Mark Grey. The lighting was by Jean Kalman and costumes by Laura Hopkins.

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Photo: Paulo Szot (Captain) and Michaela Martens (Marilyn Klinghoffer).

Photo by Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

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