Смерть Клингоффера: Опера Джона Адамса

Opera by John Adams

The Death of Klinghoffer is an American opera, with music by John Adams to an English language libretto by Alice Goodman. First produced in Brussels and New York in 1991, the opera is based on the hijacking of the passenger liner Achille Lauro by the Palestine Liberation Front in 1985, and the hijackers' murder of a 69 year old Jewish American wheelchair using passenger, Leon Klinghoffer. The concept of the opera originated with theatre director Peter Sellars, who was a major collaborator, as was choreographer Mark Morris. It was commissioned by five American and European opera companies, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The opera has generated controversy, including allegations by Klinghoffer's two daughters and others that the opera is antisemitic and glorifies terrorism. The work's creators and others have disputed these criticisms.

The prologue consists of two choruses, the "Chorus of Exiled Palestinians" and the "Chorus of Exiled Jews", each of which is a general reflection about the respective peoples and their history.

The general style of the opera's music resembles that of Adams' minimalist music period, in the vein also of music by Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Intervallic relationships such as affekt are used to evoke certain emotions. The drama is portrayed primarily in long monologues by individual characters, with commentary by the chorus, which does not take part in the action. Both Adams and Sellars have acknowledged the affinity of the opera's dramatic structure to the sacred oratorios of Johann Sebastian Bach, in particular his Passions. The plot of the opera does not contain a detailed re enactment of the events of the hijacking and the murder of Klinghoffer; the major events are not directly portrayed on stage and occur between the opera's staged scenes. The artists originally considered the opera as more of a "dramatic meditation" or "reflection", in the manner of an oratorio, rather than a conventional narrative opera driven by plot. Based on this aspect, the opera has been criticized as undramatic and static, particularly in act 1, whereas act 2 is more "conventional" in terms of operatic narrative. In defence of this unconventional structure, John Ginman has analysed the particular dramaturgy and structure of the opera. The opera's choral passages have been performed and recorded separately as Choruses from Klinghoffer.