Sellars’ ‘Klinghoffer’ Opera Premieres in Brussels

Peter Sellars, the director of the Los Angeles Festival, has sprung up afresh in Europe with a new opera that seems destined to prove no less controversial politically than artistically.

“The Death of Klinghoffer,” which met a lukewarm response in its world premiere here Tuesday at the breathtakingly baroque Theatre de la Monnaie, is loosely based on the 1985 hijacking of a Mediterranean cruise ship by four Palestinian terrorists. They killed an elderly, wheelchair-bound passenger named Leon Klinghoffer and dumped his body and wheelchair into the sea.

But “The Death of Klinghoffer” is about more than the death of Klinghoffer. Its theme is the centuries-old conflict between Jews and Palestinians. “We did not intend to make of it a political piece,” Sellars said, “but like all that we do, this is of course political.”

Nor is “Klinghoffer” only an opera. Members of the Mark Morris ballet group are on stage for more than half of the nearly three-hour production and Sellars uses giant television screens to show close-ups of some of the singers, particularly the fearsome terrorists and the beleaguered captain of the cruise ship Achille Lauro.

“Klinghoffer,” which is booked for the Los Angeles Music Center Opera in 1992 (it will be staged in Lyon, France, in April and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in September), comes from the same team that created “Nixon in China” in 1987. Alice Goodman, who wrote what Sellars describes as “one of the longest librettos in history”--in fact, it is a very long poem--was graduated from Harvard in the same class as Sellars in 1980. John Adams, the “minimalist composer” who put Goodman’s words to music, is also a Harvard product 10 years their senior. And choreographer Morris has had a long association with Sellars.

Not one for false modesty, Sellars, 33, regards “Klinghoffer” in the tradition of Greek tragedy and the Bach Passions. “It’s just a big thing,” he said.

Decked out for the premiere in his customary punk suit, Sellars left no doubt about what he thought of his work. “Pretty fabulous,” he gushed during the intermission as he scurried from one admirer to another.

Most of the audience was not so sure. Nearly everyone found something to like--and something to dislike. No two seemed to agree on the particulars.

The longer than usual intertwining of ballet and opera met with generally favorable reaction.

Less popular was the use of dancers, as well as singers--sometimes simultaneously--to portray some of the characters. When Klinghoffer’s body was lowered to the sea, for example, it was the dancer Klinghoffer, not the singer--a point of confusion for some in the audience.

Still more disappointing to many, the words were nearly incomprehensible, even to native English speakers. The 57-member chorus could scarcely be understood, and those who had not carefully studied the libretto even had trouble with the eight soloists.

The opera’s creators had debated long and hard over whether to use supertitles. “We’ve gone to massive expense to create the largest supertitles ever,” Sellars said, only to decide in the end to abandon them.

It was Goodman who fought hardest against the supertitles, arguing that they would distract from the music and the dancing. “And those are my words,” she said at a press conference a few hours before the premiere.

The music, a combination of natural and electronic sound, received a mixture of praise and criticism.

Mixed reactions also greeted the set: a superstructure of 10 tons of cold steel, reaching as high as the fourth balcony but providing only an abstract representation of a ship. Intentionally less spectacular were the costumes: Passengers and terrorists alike wore informal Western clothes in the first act, with the addition of vaguely Arab-looking wraps in the second.

Artistic niceties aside, “Klinghoffer” seems almost guaranteed by its very subject matter to trigger political controversy. Jews and Palestinians have been unable for centuries to settle their differences, and they are hardly likely to see eye to eye about this opera.

The creators insist they have no political ax to grind. “I think we would have been very foolish if we had tried to change anyone’s attitude,” Goodman said.

Sellars added: “There’s no point that you come away with. You come away with a world of emotions and feelings. . . . We’ve tried to let the characters speak for themselves . . . and let the audience draw their own conclusions.”

That they did. And at least on opening night, the predominant conclusion was that “Klinghoffer” gives more time to the Palestinian cause than the Jewish. In the prologue, the chorus sings, first as exiled Palestinians (“Israel laid all to waste”), then as exiled Jews. After that, it is the terrorists, not the Klinghoffers, who mostly dominate the stage.

“We are soldiers fighting a war,” says the terrorist Molqi. “We are not criminals and we are not vandals but men of ideals.”

Klinghoffer disagrees: “You just want to see people die. You’re crazy.”

The terrorist Rambo responds: “You are always complaining of your suffering but wherever poor men are gathered they can find Jews getting fat.”

The central event of the opera--Klinghoffer’s murder--is not portrayed on stage; the gunshot that killed him is not heard. To Sellars, this replicates for the audience the experience of the other passengers, who did not see or even hear the murder. But to many in the audience, it also robs the drama of its most damning single event.

And it is the audience, Sellars said, that in the end will have to decide what to make of “The Death of Klinghoffer.”

“I think of opera as like a wave that you try to hold in your arms,” he said. “You feel it--you’re soaking wet--but you have nothing to hold on to.”

Researcher Isabelle Maelcamp also contributed to this story.

BACKGROUND * In October, 1985, four terrorists hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship off the coast of Egypt. They held the passengers and crew hostage for three days, during which wheelchair-bound American tourist Leon Klinghoffer was murdered and dumped overboard. An Italian jury assigned joint blame for the murder to three of the ship-board terrorists and three leaders of the Palestine Liberation Front who were accused of planning the attack. In all, 11 men were convicted of crimes involved in the hijacking. The terrorists who boarded the ship are serving prison sentences in Italy. Abul Abbas and two lieutenants tried in absentia for planning the attack received life sentences. Another lieutenant, Abdul Rahim Khalid, was also tried in absentia and subsequently had his sentence extended to life. He was arrested in Greece earlier this month, and Italy is seeking his extradition. Marilyn Klinghoffer, who was with her husband Leon on the Achille Lauro, died of cancer in February, 1986.