The Death of Klinghoffer

Humanist masterpiece or historical hot potato? A libretto by Alice Goodman focusing on the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise liner by the Palestine Liberation Front and the murder of a Jewish-American passenger, Leon Klinghoffer, was always going to be controversial, given its focus on terrorism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. And sure enough, when The Death of Klinghoffer was performed by the San Francisco Opera in 1992, under the direction of Peter Sellars, it was greeted with protests from a Jewish advocacy group. Some critics condemned the production as antisemitic and for appearing to side with the hijackers. But there is so much more to this opera than meets the eye. Written in John Adams' distinctive minimalist style, its music echoes the formal structure of Bach's Passions, with the drama narrated by individual characters and commented on by the chorus. And as in the Passions, it's the choral writing that delivers some of this work’s most memorable moments, whether in the serene “Chorus of Exiled Palestinians”, which gathers pace with climactic intensity, or the profoundly reflective and despairing “Chorus of the Exiled Jews”.