The Death of Klinghoffer is an opera by the minimalist composer John Adams about the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro. It is condemned as “beyond contempt” by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre – it is difficult to get better reviews than that.
The Edinburgh International Festival contained a gem of a show in a Scottish Opera production at the glass fronted Edinburgh Festival Theatre – I went to the premiere. On the day the Gaza strip is fully evacuated and shortly to be returned to Palestine this was a timely event and following 911 and 77 I was jolly glad that no-one took 238 as a significant figure.
The story is simple but cruel – Palestinean terrorists take over a cruise ship from Alexandria and kill a wheelchair bound Jewish passenger – life goes on, callously apart from one – the opera probes the individual sentiments and on repeat viewing mines the deeper feelings. This is music, history and performance in perfect harmony – if only that were possible more often.
With a minimalist set (no digitally reconstructed Titanic set here – we are looking at back projected water on a few portholes and wooden decking – minimalist but giving focus to the excellent performances – CGI would add little to a real human tragedy, and we know it is not going to end well with the title being a big clue.
The attractive lady a few seats away from me was plucked from her seat by a middle eastern, gun toting terrorist and kicked down the stairs into a door and onto the stage – asking her out for an interval drink looked highly unlikely now. This happened simultaneously throughout parts of the audience and on stage they started to sing – either the audience were particularly gifted singers or these people were plants. It also shows a confluence of dress between opera goers and cruise ship passengers.
The cast were uniformally excellent, the gal in the peacock feathers and tight green uniform and magnificent thighs was particularly excellent, the music was minimally excellent – although not to many peoples taste if they were spoon fed Mozart, accounting for the less cramped conditions one normally gets at an opera performance. Perhaps packed performances are due to the unemployed and equity members 50% discount on dress circle prices (there wasn’t a terrorist discount listed).
With a green bathrobe clad obese woman spreading chocolate over her face, terrorists running around the stage in a wheelchair pointing automatic weapons in our general direction, a dancing girl revealing title boards and a home video of the cast lunching – this was a truly Festival event. It just needs something banned to make it historically Festival.
With the major expense looking like the wheelchair for the title character it was, on reflection, incredible to see what Scottish Opera had achieved here.
In fact I enjoyed the opera so much that when I motored back to the Borders before my TT turned into a pumpkin, I watched the channel 4 production on dvd which I had recorded ages ago but never got around to watching – television removes the immediacy of theatre and staged opera (although toilet breaks are easier) – but it is still an excellent documentary approach with a less minimalist set (it is filmed on a ship and has more splashes when the wheelchair corpse is dumped unceremoniously overboard) the music and words are still powerful and show this artform to be a true 21st century medium. The actual death was far more graphic in the film version but the death may only have been visible to the unemployed and equity members in the dress circle centre. I understood more with the filmic version but that could have been repeated viewing syndrome – there is also the web of course Klinghoffer extending that media – just waiting for the video podcast onto a PSP at the next performance.
I haven’t enjoyed John Adams so much since I forced the family to watch ‘Nixon in China’ at Christmas.
