Let’s pause to look beyond the ‘anti’

There is anti-Semitism in opera. And not only in Wagner, the art form’s most influential composer and notorious anti-Semite. Tune in to the Metropolitan Opera broadcast today (at 10 a.m. on KUSC-FM) and, a minute or two after the end of the overture, you will hear the opera’s Jewish protagonist, Eleazar, described as a heretic and a money-grubber.

The work, Jacques Fromental Halevy’s “La Juive” (The Jewess), is a rarity. A French grand opera about the persecution of Jews in the 16th century, it was a hit when first given in Paris in 1835, the audience intrigued by its exotic subject. Eleazar was a favorite role of Caruso and is also beloved by Jewish tenors. Richard Tucker, a former cantor, convinced the Met to stage the opera for him but died before the company got around to it. The new production, the first at the Met in 67 years, was mounted for Neil Shicoff, a cantor’s son.

This “Juive” has sparked much interest. Eleazar is a complex character. In the New Yorker, Alex Ross described the role as a “beautifully shaded portrait of a good man driven into a state of irremediable rage.” Shicoff is impressively intense and, at the performance I attended last week, brought down the house.

Yet given that Halevy was himself Jewish and that the subject of the clearly anti-clerical opera is religious intolerance, the Met can hardly be accused of fostering operatic anti-Semitism. Were the company in any way worried about controversy, it surely would not have scheduled “La Juive” to open its broadcast season. Of course, it hardly has to worry about thousands of listeners with librettos in hand. “La Juive” is sung in not always intelligible French, and translations are not that easy to find (the one readily available recording comes with only a plot synopsis).

By a curious coincidence, John Adams’ “The Death of Klinghoffer” -- an opera many New Yorkers angrily branded anti-Semitic when it was first given at the Brooklyn Academy of Music a dozen years ago in a Peter Sellars production -- returned to BAM last week in a semi-staged performance by the Brooklyn Philharmonic. But this time, there was little fuss over “Klinghoffer,” which concerns the Palestinian hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985 and the terrorist killing of a Jewish passenger, Leon Klinghoffer, who was thrown overboard in his wheelchair.

What so irked audiences and critics in Brooklyn a dozen years ago was that “Klinghoffer” appeared to show sympathy for the Palestinian cause, both in the eloquence of Alice Goodman’s libretto and in the exquisite music Adams composed for ruminating terrorists nostalgic for the beauty of their homeland and the warm hospitality of their culture. Even though the dying Klinghoffer sings a hauntingly beautiful aria and we leave the opera house shaken by the final image of Marilyn Klinghoffer’s anguish, it still was considered intolerable for Klinghoffer’s killers to express how they, too, felt driven into irremediable rage.

A religious fanatic, Eleazar is, in his own right, a terrorist. The goldsmith adopts a Christian daughter, Rachel, and raises her Jewish. When she has an illicit affair with a Christian prince, Rachel and Eleazar are condemned to death. He could save her by revealing her true birth. But so great is his hatred of Cardinal Brogni that he chooses martyrdom. Just as Rachel is thrown in the fire, he gets his revenge on Brogni. Where is my daughter? the cardinal asks. “There she is,” Eleazar says with his dying words.

In an essay on the new anti-Semitism in the current issue of Tikkun, the left-wing Jewish journal, Miriam Greenspan focuses on the unnatural, pathological condition of hate. Citing Willard Gaylin’s book “Hatred: the Psychological Descent Into Violence,” she calls hatred a social disease and a form of delusional thinking. “The desperation in the Palestinian camps does not explain or justify acts of terrorism committed by Palestinians,” she writes, paraphrasing Gaylin, “because hatred is not a rational emotion, or a viable political program.”

Eleazar’s hatred should not justify his actions any more than Palestinian terrorists’ hatred justifies their killing. But Halevy’s opera, Shicoff’s powerful performance and the Met’s production urge us to empathize. Gunther Kramer’s staging has been widely attacked. It is updated and relatively abstract. The boring set by Gottfried Pilz includes the steep ramp, large chandelier and tables and chairs typical of the designer, who was responsible for Los Angeles Opera’s “Queen of Spades” two years ago.

By removing the historic milieu, the production, according to its detractors, robs the opera of the political and social context of the anti-Semitism of the era, an issue exhaustively discussed in a new book, “Opera, Liberalism, and Antisemitism in Nineteenth Century France,” by Diana R. Hallman. But I suspect that the reason the opera is being taken so seriously is because the production avoids all the superficial trappings of French grand opera and focuses on individuals. How might audiences have reacted if this serious subject had been surrounded by silly dances and over-the-top spectacle? In fact, the Met’s “Juive” tries so hard to be serious that the opera, which is second-rate musically, starts to feel condescending.

Although a much finer score and libretto, “Klinghoffer” avoided controversy at BAM by simply not being very engaging. The cast was weak, the chorus poor and underpowered, the orchestra underrehearsed. The semi-staging consisted mainly of projections by filmmaker Bill Morrison of the Achille Lauro and a roiling sea on a scrim in front of the singers. Robert Spano conducted lyrically but without dramatic conviction.

There was one brilliant moment for the dying Klinghoffer, his falling into the depths reminiscent of Morrison’s exceptional utilization of decaying film stock in his film “Decasia.” But mainly the effect was to distance a listener from the drama and music. “What was all the fuss about?” I heard people asking afterward.

What all the fuss is still about can be found on Penny Woolcock’s shockingly realistic film of the opera, which has just been released on DVD. The unflinching British director invents disturbing back stories of terrorists and Israeli passengers, and the opera turns into a visceral, overwhelmingly powerful exploration of hatred as a social disease. Adams conducts, and the cast is stunning and brave.

There was one more curious coincidence of anti-Semitism popping up unexpectedly in opera last week. The Met unveiled its new production of Berlioz’s “Benvenuto Cellini,” which will be broadcast in two weeks. It is a wonderful, little-known opera and is performed with infectious spirit. I found Andrei Serban’s production, though roundly booed, a witty delight. But the libretto has one unfortunate line. Angered by the paltry sum of a papal commission, Cellini rails against the Vatican treasurer, calling him a shabby Jew.

No evidence exists that Berlioz was anti-Semitic, despite recent efforts to make an issue of that line. “Cellini,” which is a close contemporary of “La Juive,” is a product of its time, and such comments were, sadly, part of the culture.

The Met, however, doesn’t want you to know that. The company did not translate the line in its “Met titles.” But pretending that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist is always much more dangerous than coming to terms with it. And where better to do so than in opera? It is, after all, a medium that thrives on overheated emotions and the complexities of hatred.