An Attempt At Unhysterical Response To The Opera, "The Death of Klinghoffer"
In my capacity as a rabbi with a pulpit in Manhattan only a few blocks from the debut of the controversial opera, "The Death Of Klinghoffer" premiered a few weeks ago, I resisted the pressures on me to run immediately down to Lincoln Center and protest something I had not yet heard or read.
Since I am also an instrumental and choral composer, I turned my blended musical and religious vocational chops loose onto the task of listening to John Adams's "Klinghoffer" – and his Pulitzer-winning, "On the Transmigration of Souls" – before passing judgment.
Biblical ethics demand no less: see Proverbs 18:13.
After listening and pondering, I now have this to say.
"Klinghoffer" is a bad opera with a bad libretto.
It deserves to be overlooked - not only for its ethically and artistically impoverished attempted air of artistic-audacity obtained at the expense of the human dignity of a wheel-chair bound man murdered for being a Jew – but also because it is in my view, not good music or worthwhile writing. I could write libretto and score for an opera, "Kennedy's Brain Exploding" – taking each of the centers of the assassinated President's brain, showing them via film projected onto a scrim like that suggested by Tennessee Williams in his stage notes for "The Glass Menagerie" – leaving the President's head as the fatal bullet propels them – and making them speak their contents. I think I could do quite a job with it – and it would be a lame, awful work pivoting on gore. I say the same of "Klinghoffer."
As for Adam's "Transmigration"– it seems to have won a Pulitzer for the same reason President Obama was given a Nobel Prize: merely being in the right place at the right time. A kid with Garageband could quite likely do much better. Listen to the 4th movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or Copland's "Lincoln Portrait" for truly erudite musical attempts at focused composition-craft with political/societal themes. Attempting audacity does not merit reward for shock-value alone – Lenny Bruce died trying for it. One can only hope the shock-stock in Adam's werkverzeichnis will eventually do the same.
Adams has works of merit, that merit listening.
"Klinghoffer" is not among them.
Israelis have a saying for those who do terrible evil:
"Yemach shemo u'zichrono.” (May his name and the memory of him disappear.)
The people who committed the brutal, antisemitic slaughter of a man in a wheelchair do not deserve to be put onstage to sing their murderous thoughts. They deserve to disappear into the trash bin of history.
The name "Klinghoffer' should be remembered for who Leon Klinghoffer was, and what was done to him, in the spirit of the Holocaust mottos, "Never again" and "Remember" - not for Adams' blank exploitation of it.
I retain my belief that the role of art is to lift us – not diminish us. No parent living should ever believe that raising a son who would throw a man in a wheelchair into the sea to die, simply because of his religion or race, will ever deserve to be memorialized or ennobled by being provided with an artistic portrayal of himself singing the reasons, and reenacting the deeds, of his act of murder.
One man's – rabbi's – composer's – editorial, for whatever it might be worth.
Bruce L. Cohen
Manhattan • 6 November 2014