http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/arts/music/john-adams-death-of-klinghoffer-metropolitan-opera-debut.html 2014-10-21 14:02:56 John Adams’s ‘Death of Klinghoffer’ at the Metropolitan Opera Hundreds assembled near Lincoln Square Plaza to protest “The Death of Klinghoffer,” a raw, penetrating, strangely mystical work by the composer John Adams. === One of the most wrenching moments in “The Death of Klinghoffer,” the 1991 opera by the composer Marilyn has just been told by the captain of the Italian cruise ship on which she had been enjoying a Mediterranean tour with her husband, Leon Klinghoffer, that Leon is dead. He has been shot by Palestinian hijackers, who tossed his body into the sea along with the wheelchair he used. As this horror sinks in, Marilyn erupts at the earnest captain, who had tried to reason with the Palestinians. “You embraced them!” she sings with stinging outrage, as the orchestra breaks into fitful leaps and shrieking chords. Slowly, though, memories come to her of nights at home when the children were out and just she and Leon sat together. “I wouldn’t glance up/From the book on my lap/For hours at a time,” she sings, while the music’s sputtering vocal lines, jagged rhythms and piercing cluster chords gradually settle into a mood of quieter despair. “I knew his face so well/His beautiful smile.” Marilyn and Leon Klinghoffer were a modest, hard-working Jewish-American couple from New York. And the “children” referred to presumably are their daughters, Lisa and Ilsa Klinghoffer, who have long been distressed by this opera, which they feel, as they write in a program note, “rationalizes, romanticizes and legitimizes the terrorist murder of our father.” There were, It was certainly “Klinghoffer,” though not without flaws, including a couple of satirical Western characters that could have been left out, is a searching, spiritual and humane work. The piece is as much a ruminative reflection on the events of the Achille Lauro cruise ship as a dramatization of them. This is one of Mr. Adams’s most inspired and personal scores, with episodes of haunting, hazy music where, over subdued, ominous, sustained bass tones in the orchestra, instruments spin out elegiac melodic lines full of ancient-sounding curlicues. And Ms. Goodman’s poetic libretto, though often enigmatic, is powerfully so. Portions of the text remind me of Elizabeth Bishop’s poems, which can seem profound and full of richly detailed imagery even when the meaning is obscure. The staging by the acclaimed British The opera opens with a pair of brooding, elegiac choruses: first a Chorus of Exiled Palestinians, then a Chorus of Exiled Jews. The sets by Tom Pye have a back wall of moving panels that serve as surfaces for video images by Finn Ross. The first chorus begins with a group of bedraggled Palestinian woman singing a weary, churning melodic line, invoking razed villages and a collective longing for a homeland. We see images of arid lands and parched hills. When the men join in, the music turns violent, with denunciations of the “supplanters.” Then, choristers remove their hoods and outer garments (the costumes are by Laura Hopkins) to become the exiled Jews, in modern garb. “Klinghoffer” places enormous demands on an opera house chorus, and the Met’s great choristers threw themselves into every scene. The characters in the opera sometimes recall the events of the hijacking and at other times enact them. This production tries to clarify the difference between past and present. In the first scene, we see the captain and several passengers taking turns at a lectern, delivering their individual accounts of an episode years in the past. First, there is the long narrative of the Captain, as the character is called, performed here by the baritone As the opera unfolds, historical facts about the cruise, its passengers and the hijackers are projected on back walls, complete with dates and photographs, including images of the Klinghoffers. Without this information, the opera can be hard to follow, a complaint leveled at the original production in Brussels, which later played at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Yet, this projected information often undermines the reflective, oratorical mood the music and words are striving for. The lanky tenor Sean Panikkar brings youthful rashness and a bright, defiant voice to the role of Molqi, the hotheaded Palestinian. The bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, with his husky physique and robust voice, makes a menacing figure as the hijacker nicknamed “Rambo,” who spouts a hateful anti-Jewish rant. In a way, the bravest portrayal comes from the sturdy bass-baritone The Captain replies that if Mamoud could talk like this among his enemies, peace would come. In response, Mr. Allicock’s Mamoud, looking stone-faced, brought chilling calm to the passage that underlines the tragedy of this opera: The day he and his enemies sit peacefully, Mamoud explains, each “putting his case” and working toward peace, is “the day our hope dies,” the day that “I shall die, too.” In the libretto, the murder takes place offstage. Here, it is depicted explicitly, which should silence detractors who charge that “Klinghoffer” explains away a vicious murder. The baritone A tragic irony of this great opera comes when Marilyn is told that Leon has been taken below deck to the infirmary to be watched over. This means that for a while, Marilyn, who has cancer (a disease Though there were some boos mixed in, the ovations at the end where tremendous, especially for the beaming Mr. Adams. The audience seemed grateful for the chance to actually see this opera, instead of just hearing about it.