• DOI:10.1080/1026716032000152217
• Corpus ID: 191575444

Opera as ‘Information’: The Dramaturgy of The Death of Klinghoffer

@article{Ginman2004OperaA,
  title={Opera as ‘Information’: The Dramaturgy of The Death of Klinghoffer},
  author={John Ginman},
  journal={Contemporary Theatre Review},
  year={2004},
  volume={14},
  pages={51 - 59}
}

• John Ginman
• Published 1 February 2004
• Art
• Contemporary Theatre Review

The Death of Klinghoffer is one of the most undervalued operas of the last 20 years. First performed in Brussels on 19 March 1991, it is the second collaboration between composer John Adams, librettist Alice Goodman and director Peter Sellars. 1 It has attracted much hostile criticism, both on account of its alleged pro-Palestinian bias and of its supposedly unconvincing dramaturgy. The recent Channel 4 film of the opera, directed by Penny Woolcock and first screened on television in May 2003, creates a fresh opportunity to consider the nature and quality of its achievement. The controversy is not hard to explain. The opera’s subject-matter was, and remains, contentious: the issues surrounding the hijacking of the cruise-ship Achille Lauro by pro-Palestinian terrorists in 1985, and the shooting of one of its Jewish-American passengers, Leon Klinghoffer. The Death of Klinghoffer still offers a startling sense, rare in opera today, of an encounter with powerful, unresolved political issues that touch us directly. By comparison with its acclaimed predecessor, Nixon in China , The Death of Klinghoffer ’s political stance is ambiguous and uncomfortable, and the work is almost relentlessly serious in tone from beginning to end: its librettist, Alice Goodman, has plausibly described the earlier opera’s approach as ‘heroic’. 2 Whereas the end of The Death of Klinghoffer seems to demand political engagement of its audience, the end of Nixon in China seems to encourage the opposite, as Chou EnLai meditates on the ultimate impotence of Man in the face of death. His last words may be a call to action but they are accompanied by music that seems to unravel its energy as it subsides lyrically towards silence. The Death of Klinghoffer may be more sober, but it sustains its innovative and experimental dramaturgy, its alert sense of challenge, to the end. In doing so, it represents a significant advance on its predecessor. A keen sense of purpose informs its approach. The Death of 1. The first was Nixon in China , first performed at Houston Grand Opera on 22 October 1987.