Preview - ENO’s The Death of Klinghoffer at The London Coliseum
Published: 1 March, 2012
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR
If you’re a fan of John Adams and/or a masochist, then English National Opera’s new production of his opera The Death of Klinghoffer is for you.
For many, though, irritable tedium may well triumph over the opera’s excellent features.
It is about the 1985 hijacking by Palestinians of cruise liner Achille Lauro and murder of elderly Jewish passenger Leon Klinghoffer, sitting in his wheelchair.
More precisely, the hijacking is used as the peg for poetic meditations on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, exile and history.
When first performed 20 years ago, the opera was highly controversial. Now it seems too far removed from reality and the advocated solution of talk not action is just naïve.
Against this backdrop, the opera is really about a hijacked liner wandering around the eastern Mediterranean while hijackers and staff wait for their future to be decided by diplomats.
There’s next to no story-line, no narrative, no real drama outside the murder of Klinghoffer, not much in the way of character development or relationships, certainly no love interest.
All that being said, the opera does have strong features.
Its structure – based on Bach’s Passions – works well, the choruses of Exiled Palestinians and Exiled Jews being quite beautiful.
Soloists make the most of their arias, really prolonged recitatives marked devoid of tunes or melodies.
Adams’ trademark style of highly repetitive orchestral music is exhilarating for a time.
Clever use of video images imbues a sense of drama absent from the storyline.
Well before the end, however, tedium sets as the lack of narrative and melodious song together become irritable and boring – and so does Adams’ repetitive music.
• ENO’s The Death of Klinghoffer, is at The Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane, WC2, on March 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9, 0871 472 0600, www.eno.org