Oust Wagner, Israeli Music Festival Urges

Bowing to protests from Holocaust survivors, an Israeli music festival decided Friday to ask conductor Daniel Barenboim to drop music by Hitler’s favorite composer, Richard Wagner, from his program at the festival.

Barenboim is scheduled to conduct the first act of Wagner’s opera “The Valkyrie” with the Berliner Staatskapelle and solo singers July 7 at the Israel Festival in Jerusalem.

There has been an outpouring of protest in Israel over the planned performance, including from the parliament and Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert.

The festival board decided Friday to ask Barenboim, the orchestra and tenor Placido Domingo to consider playing music by other composers instead, said board chairman Dan Halperin.

Wagner died 50 years before Hitler came to power, but he was an avowed anti-Semite and his music inspired Nazi propaganda.

Barenboim, who has Israeli citizenship but lives in Berlin, could not be reached for comment late Friday.

But only three days earlier, he told journalists in Berlin, where he is artistic director of the Unter den Linden opera house, that Wagner’s operas, in contrast with his writings, are not anti-Semitic.

Alluding to the 350,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel, Barenboim said he was aware of their sensitivities and the “horrible associations” many have with Wagner.

But one shouldn’t confuse the music with the man, he said, describing Wagner as “an open and horrible anti-Semite” but his music as moving.