Protests over the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of the John Adams opera “Death of Klinghoffer” prompted me to go back and re-read my review of the 2011 Opera Theater of St. Louis production. Interestingly, my reaction to the opera then was almost identical to Anne Midgette’s in the Washington Post today:
‘Klinghoffer’
Until this month, amazingly, Adams’ second “CNN opera” (after the 1987 Nixon in China) hadn’t had a fully staged American performance since 1991. Adams is one of the most performed and honored living American composers, but Klinghoffer picks at open wounds, not just scabs, of Mideast conflict. Presenters are wary.
It’s based on the 1985 hijacking, by Palestinian terrorists, of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-using American Jew, was murdered and shoved into the Mediterranean.
Both soloists and choruses in the opera voice grievances ancient and modern of Jews and Palestinians alike. Fueled by religious fervor, the fury of the four hijackers is terrifying, but even the elderly Klinghoffer raises his voice in righteous indignation. Hapless American and European vacationers are caught in the middle.
The music in the first half is often surprisingly beautiful, the orchestra a flowing, shimmering counterpoint to extensive choral numbers in piquant harmonies. As the dramatic screws tighten, the orchestra becomes more agitated and dissonant. Solo vocal writing is mostly somewhere between speech-rhythm recitative and arioso.
The opera’s problems are verbal and dramatic. Alice Goodman’s very wordy libretto sometimes veers off into prose-poetry as inscrutable as a Mallarmé poem or Giraudoux play. In the end, Klinghoffer’s widow, in an interminable monologue, becomes more annoyance than object of pity. Adams and Goodman go on after the curtain should have fallen.
That said, OTSL artistic director James Robinson, set designer Allen Moyer and an ardent cast gave the work a powerful realization. Giant riveted and portholed black panels evoked the ship but also slid and revolved to redefine spaces. Greg Emetaz supplied atmospheric projections of the sea and desert sands.
This is an opera calling for singing more vivid than beautiful, but Christopher Magiera, as the Captain, provided a core of handsome vocalism as well as a moral center. There were powerful performances from Matthew DiBattista (as the terrorist Molqi), Paul La Rosa (First Officer and Rambo), Aubrey Allicock (Mamoud), Laura Wilde (Omar), Brian Mulligan (Leon Klinghoffer), Nancy Maultsby (Marilyn Klinghoffer) and Lucy Schaufer (as a Swiss grandmother, Austrian woman and British dancer).
The chorus, prepared by R. Robert Ainsley, sang with impressive focus and assurance, and conductor Michael Christie exerted sure direction in the pit.