In the New York Times yesterday there was an article about the Metropolitan Opera's production of John Adams' "The Death of Klinghoffer". People are protesting the portrayal of the terrorists on board the ship as having a sympathetic side in that particular tragic incident. This is a huge issue of art and free speech and fairness in history. I admit to being sympathetic to the protestors, as the event didn't happen that long ago, and people who are alive were traumatized, and an innocent man's life was destroyed.
Yet I never heard of protests about "Nixon in China" and "Dr. Atomic", though both of those operas take liberties to discuss true events in symbolic and inaccurate ways. Adams saw an opportunity to focus on tragedy that is modern not ancient, and in the process made us think more deeply about iconic public figures. In the 1930's, Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein used the historical figure Susan B. Anthony to great advantage and in the process made her come alive in an all new way in their opera "The Mother of Us All".
I'm proud of the protestors and proud of the artists. It takes courage to revisit an event that is codified in our history and make it disturbing enough to come alive again. I haven't seen "The Death of Klinghoffer", but I've listened to the CD. It's serious and haunting and trusts the audience to grapple with what the ultimate meaning of the event is or was and more importantly, how each person participating feels about the subject. We are not talking about made up, gratuitous violence here, but real actions in a real world that perhaps doesn't pause often enough to think for themselves about news. Adams makes us work. The reopening of a closed discussion is painful, but may ultimately be illuminating.
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