/ARTS WEEKLY/BRITAIN: Terrorism, Opera, and now Cinema

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Beverly Andrews

LONDON, Jun 3 2003 (IPS) - John Adams’ searing opera ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’, which examines the hijacking of the Italian cruise liner the Achille Lauro, has had a strange and turbulent history.

It was premiered in Brussels toward the end of the first Gulf War 1991. Then it was scheduled for a platform performance by the Boston Symphony in the wake of the Sep. 11 terrorist attack in New York, but then withdrawn. Now, finally, a film version has premiered at the end of the second Gulf War.

This disturbing examination of the roots of terrorism seems to gain in relevance as the years go by.

Composer John Adams, film director Penny Woolcocks and librettist Alice Goodman have produced among them an extraordinary film which places the Palestinian act of violence inside a political context and seems to suggest that unspeakable suffering will in turn lead to fanatical violence.

The opera opens with the captain of the ship answering the questions put to him by reporters of what actually took place on the doomed ocean liner. As he begins his tale of the tragic events of that ship’s journey, the clock is turned back to the day of the ship’s departure.

But then unexpectedly the clock is turned back further to 1948 and the establishment of an Israeli state. We are shown Palestinian villages where the inhabitants are driven from their homes. It is only after they have fled that a tearful soldier rolls up his sleeves to reveal a number tattooed on his arm.

The opera then goes further back in time to 1946 and shows that same man on a crowded ship with other Holocaust survivors as they eagerly wait for a glimpse of the promised land. This is a bold and uncompromising opening for an opera. There appears a striking determination at neutrality and balance. A balance, which the composer states, was not intentional but one at which they all arrived at during the course of time.

In a previous interview, he states, "we weren’t making an overly conscious attempt to be neutral but on the other hand after reading about the background it was impossible not to have strong feelings." Adams goes on to state, "and I think we all felt independently of one another that the situation like any complicated political situation in the world is much too complicated to fall into one easy answer or another."

The opera’s determined evenhandedness is perhaps the one aspect which has enraged many critics particularly those in the U.S., where some have gone so far as to call for a ban on the opera.

But they miss the point that the piece and particularly the film adaptation appears to make – a determination to ask questions of the participants in this tragedy, to try to understand who they really are.

The Palestinian terrorists are revealed to be grieving for relatives killed either directly or indirectly as a result of Israeli occupation. In one case, a beautiful little girl who is first shown fleeing the advancing Israeli militia is later seen as the bloated corpse of a middle age woman killed in the Sabra refugee camp. That woman was the mother of one of the hijackers.

But in humanising the terrorists, the opera never apologises for their act of madness. The viewer is always reminded that their victim is in the end a sick, helpless old man. Leon Klinghoffer was an American tourist, confined to his wheelchair and accompanied by his loving wife on a holiday, which would ultimately lead to his death.

‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ focus on a real person mirrors in many ways his most famous work ‘Nixon in China’, a groundbreaking opera which looked at the former U.S. president’s historic trip to China. But where the earlier work focused on a flawed man who changed history, ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ looks at a kindly person who found himself the victim of a history he had no hand in shaping.

No one knows why he was singled out, whether it was an argument he had earlier with one of the hijackers, or it was his disability. Perhaps the most likely explanation is that he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and ultimately found himself the focus of fanatical hatred that was decades old.

One of the most heartbreaking sections in the film is where Klinghoffer, separated from the rest of the passengers and left sitting on the ship’s deck in the blazing sunlight, sings in plaintive voice that he should have worn a hat.

Shot on location in the Mediterranean and acted with a raw energy and conviction which is rare in opera films ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ is a timely, heartbreaking account of an act of terror committed as part of an seemingly never ending cycle of retribution.

The piece implies that while unresolved conflicts are allowed to fester they will inevitably continue to spawn violence. But perhaps the opera’s greatest achievement is to show the consequences of this violence. The last word in the film is given to Klinghoffers grief-stricken widow who sings, "They should have killed me too."