Protests and Politics Greet ‘Klinghoffer’ at Met

New York Times – by Michael Cooper

As the Metropolitan Opera began its first performance of John Adams’s “The Death of Klinghoffer” on Monday night, police officers were posted inside the opera house, protesters in wheelchairs lined Columbus Avenue and the opera had become the subject of a charged debate about art and Middle East politics that reverberated from City Hall to a large rally, several hundred strong, at Lincoln Center.  

The opera explores the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, an American Jewish passenger in a wheelchair by members of the Palestine Liberation Front during the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship, and has become one of the most controversial premieres at the Met in decades, even drawing threats.

The work has long aroused passions, but the opera arrives at a moment when many Jews are anguished by anti-Semitic episodes in Europe and reactions to the war this summer in Gaza. It has also ignited what sounded at times like a revival of the culture wars of the 1990s, in which works of art became fodder for intense political debate.

“Klinghoffer” is considered a masterpiece by many music critics. But protesters, many of whom have never seen the opera, believe that it gives voice to the grievances of the hijackers and justifies or celebrates their actions. Some have gone further, charging the opera is anti-Semitic, which is disputed by the Met, the opera’s creators and the Anti-Defamation League. The debate over the 1991 opera was taken up by New York’s past and present mayors.

As former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican, joined protesters outside the opera house on Monday evening to denounce the work, which he said offered “a distorted view of history,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, defended the Met’s right to perform it. He said Mr. Giuliani “had a history of challenging cultural institutions when he disagreed with their content.”

“I don’t think that’s the American way,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference in Queens, apparently referring to Mr. Giuliani’s efforts as mayor in 1999 to end support to the Brooklyn Museum of Art an exhibition that Mr. Giuliani deemed offensive. “I think the American way is to respect freedom of speech. Simple as that.”

Mr. Giuliani, who said that he had intervened in Brooklyn because he did not believe public money should have been used to pay for the exhibition, said that unlike some of the other protesters, he was not calling for the production to be canceled and he called for peaceful protests.

“The Met, and those who decide to go see this production, have every right to do so, and it would be hypocritical and anti-American for us to interfere with that, and to stop that,” Mr. Giuliani said at the rally. “They have that right. But we also have a right, just as strong, and just as compelling to point out the historical inaccuracy and the historical damage this contributed to.”

Security was tight at the opera house. All operagoers asked to check their bags, and those bags were inspected with more rigor than usual.

Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, who said that he had received threats and that some cast members had been harassed online, addressed the performers and musicians at Friday’s final dress rehearsal to tell them about enhanced security measures.

The large rally across from Lincoln Center drew some Jewish leaders, and current and former elected officials including former Gov. David A. Paterson, a Democrat; Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat; and Representative Peter T. King, a Republican.

Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, who was the rally’s master of ceremonies, said he did not expect protesters to react inappropriately. “But you can’t be responsible when the Metropolitan Opera advocates terrorism and incites violence; you can’t know what will happen,” he said. “And anything that happens, that has besmirched this Metropolitan Opera, and besmirched Lincoln Center, is to be laid at the foot of Peter Gelb.”

No arrests had been reported as of about 8 p.m.

One protester, Hilary Barr, 55, a pediatric nurse from Westchester County, said she believed that the opera made excuses for terrorism. “By putting this on a stage in the middle of Manhattan, the message is, ‘Go out, murder someone, be a terrorist and we’ll write a play about you,’ ” she said.

A handful of people held a counterdemonstration. James Saslow, 66, a professor of theater history at Queens College, carried a sign reading: “A work of art about a subject is not a work in favor of that subject.”

The opera, and the Met, were also defended by some artistic figures.

“It is not only permissible for the Met to do this piece — it’s required for the Met to do the piece,” Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, said in an interview. “It is a powerful and important opera.”

The protests were initially led by several smaller Jewish groups and conservative religious organizations. The larger Anti-Defamation League brokered a compromise with the Met, which pleased few on either side, in which plans to show the opera to a wider audience in movie theaters were dropped, but the New York production would otherwise go on. Leaders in the more liberal Reform Judaism movement have condemned the opera, but stopped short of calling for its cancellation.

Mr. Giuliani, an opera buff, said that unlike many of the opera’s critics, he was familiar with “Klinghoffer,” owned a recording and had listened to it and read the libretto.

“If we listen to it just as an opera, and close our eyes and don’t read the libretto, it’s a good opera,” he said. “I think John Adams is one of the great modern composers.”

But Mr. Giuliani said he objected to the libretto. “It didn’t tell the true story; it created for history a myth, and contributed to a sense of moral equivalency — that we should treat both sides the same,” he said, adding that such a view had troubling foreign policy repercussions.

As mayor, Mr. Giuliani expelled Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, from a concert for world leaders at Lincoln Center the year after Mr. Arafat shared a Nobel Peace Prize, citing the Achille Lauro hijacking as one of the reasons.