Only recently did the operatic adaptation of Angels in America, the important and very Jewish play, run in New York. So it got us thinking, what are other Jewish operas?

There are plenty about Biblical characters, usually written by non-Jewish artists from gentile perspectives. And plenty of operas have a Jewish character here or there, sometimes as a pretty unfortunate stereotype (it’s bound to happen with an art form that’s centuries old). There are several operatic adaptations of The Merchant of Venice alone. Then there’s the singular example of The Death of Klinghoffer, which Lord knows has drawn a lot of attention for its depiction of a real fatal terrorist attack against a Jewish man.

But here are a few honest-to-God operas with Jewish characters, some, we confess, still more likable than others. There are more where these come from, but this is a good list of five that are of at least some prominence:

1. Nabucco is perhaps the highest-profile work on this list, since its composer is Giuseppe Verdi (the librettist is Temistocle Solera). also perhaps best known for its “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves.” The title refers to Nebuchadnezzar, as in, the Babylonian king, and it’s about the destruction of the Temple and birth of the Jewish Diaspora. Are the Jews clearly written by people who had very little understanding of what it means to be Jewish? Sure, but they are the heroes, and the score is great.

2. Harvey Milk is a 1995 opera composed by Stewart Wallace, with a libretto by Jewish writer Michael Korie. Yes, it’s a bio-musical of the Jewish LGBT activist, over a decade before the film of Milk’s life.

3. Jerry Springer: The Opera isn’t much Jewish in content; it’s about themes of sin and redemption, and Jesus even puts in an appearance. But it is a freewheeling critique of Springer’s infamous TV show, with Jerry as the central figure. (Um, spoiler alert, though: He dies at the end. And the real Springer actually attended a performance!)

In an amazing coincidence, off-Broadway’s New Group just announced that it’s producing this opera next season, but in the meantime, you can watch the whole thing online!

4. The Dybbuk. Yes, there is an opera version of the S.Y. Ansky tale of Jewish demonic possession. It premiered in 1951, composed and written respectively by brothers David and Alex Tamkin.

5. La Juive means “The Jew[ess]” in French, and even though it debuted in 1835, it’s actually an opera by a Jewish composer, Fromental Halévy (though the librettist, Eugène Scribe, was not). The story of a doomed interfaith love is a general condemnation of anti-Semitism. Not bad considering that Jews had relatively recently been emancipated in France.

Image via Wikimedia.

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Have you ever watched a Tony Kushner play and thought it was operatic? Well, you wouldn’t be the only one, and as a result you can see Louis Ironson, Ethel Rosenberg, Roy Cohn, and the gang trade in monologues for arias in Angels in America… the opera. Flying angels, imminent mortality, ghosts, heartbreak, Mormons, the show has it all.

The man behind this adaptation is Péter Eötvös, a Hungarian musical artist, whose other work has included an opera about Lilith (neat!), and the libretto has been adapted by Mari Mezei. While the piece is about a decade old, it’s actually making its New York (though not American) premiere in a few days, through the New York City Opera for a short run beginning this Saturday.

Picture the intensity of the two-part, seven hour play squished into a two-and-a-half-hour opera, infused with jazz and pop music. Remember, Tony Kushner wrote a sung-through musical based partially on his own childhood, so this isn’t even entirely untrod territory. So this adaptation makes for a very Jewish opera— for example, it’s condensed, but it keeps moments like the scene where Ethel Rosenberg sings “Tum Balalaika” to a dying Roy Cohn (this time in an eerie off-kilter way), one of the most Jewish moments in theatre of any genre in the last fifty years.

Writing for the New York Times, Bernard Holland reviewed the 2006 Boston production of Angels in America, saying, “Mr. Eötvös, a Hungarian composer long residing in France, has so acutely touched Mr. Kushner’s unequivocally American personalities… He has written truly theatrical music that advances texts rather than calling attention to itself.”

But if you’re not in New York, or can’t make any of the four performances of this run, don’t despair. You can actually watch the entire 2006 French production of Angels in America below. God bless YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB5YbyzRgok

Angels in America runs at the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center through June 16.

Image via Jazz at Lincoln Center.

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So, one of the terrorists in the recent New York run of the suuuuuper-controversial opera The Death of Klinghoffer was played by—who else?—a Jew.

If this is your first time on the internet and you’re unfamiliar with the Klinghoffer fracas (greetings!), I suggest you familiarize yourself here and here. (tl;dr version: a Jewish American named Leon Klinghoffer was murdered aboard a cruise ship by Palestinian terrorists in 1985, someone made an opera about it, a lot of people find the opera deeply offensive, others think it’s OK/not that big of a deal/really good.)

Anyway, dancer Jesse Kovarsky has published a very interesting essay on Gawker about his experience playing Omar, the hijacker who shoots Klinghoffer in the opera. Key to landing the role was his “ample facial hair” and “ethnically ambiguous” look—and of course, talent:

I must admit it was a strange phone call to my parents (not opera fans) to let them know I had gotten a leading role in a controversial contemporary opera playing the part of a Palestinian terrorist. As a liberal Jew from the northern suburbs of Chicago, I never imagined those words would come out of my mouth. I also realized I knew very little about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In order to preserve my humble naivety, I entered the rehearsal process seeking to gather as much information as I could.

Kovarsky did a lot of reading during rehearsals: Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore, Palestine by Joe Sacco, The History of the Jews by Paul Johnson, and The Achille Lauro Hijacking by Micahel K. Bohn. “We were viewing the subject matter from as many angles as we could,” he writes. “As there are not two sides to Israel-Palestine, there are not two sides to Klinghoffer.”

So, does Kovarsky sympathize with Omar? Yes and no. On the one hand, he explains, it’s impossible to fully insert yourself into the mind of a terrorist when you’re a secular millennial who doesn’t have any “extreme beliefs.” But on the other hand, having a massive weapon around your neck can certainly help you situate yourself in a zealous, fanatical mindset:

In order for me to gain access to that frame of mind, it ultimately came down to the last five minutes I had to myself before going on stage. That’s when I put my AK-47 around my neck. I felt its weight, its power, and its significance, and I begin to convince myself that everything I did from that point on was for a higher cause.

Full piece is here.

(Image: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)

Related: The Death of Klinghoffer: “Art for Art’s Sake” or Anti-Semitism?

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The Mark Chagall murals and crystal chandeliers hanging in the Metropolitan Opera were visible from the barricades on Columbus Avenue and 65th Street, where hundreds of protesters gathered yesterday to denounce the season premiere of John Adams’ controversial opera, The Death of Klinghoffer. The protest drew a varied crowd, ranging from young children accompanied by their families, to college students, to the elderly. Some had arrived as early as noon.

Signs that read “Cancel racist opera, insult to arts” and “Gelb, are you taking terror $$$” were held high during the demonstration. Long after the start of the premiere, cries of “shame, shame, shame”—often led by some of the guest speakers—boomed across Lincoln Center. Notable attendees included former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Congressman Peter King, who both addressed the crowd. “If you listen,” said Giuliani, “you will see that the emotional context of the opera truly romanticizes the terrorists.”

The Death of Klinghoffer, with music by John Adams and a libretto by Alice Goodman, has incited fury since the Met decided added it to its performance schedule in February. The opera is based on the assassination of Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound American Jew who was shot and thrown overboard an Italian cruise ship by PLF terrorists in 1985.

Reactions to the opera tend to fall into two opposing camps: those who defend free speech and ‘art for art’s sake,’ and those who claim that the libretto perpetuates anti-Semitism and glorifies terrorists. Most of the people interviewed had not seen the opera or read the entire libretto.

“It’s a chance for us to physically voice our opinions and show our unhappiness—and disappointment—with the Metropolitan opera,” said 19-year-old Rosie Lenoff, who studies psychology at Stern College. “They are saying it’s freedom of expression, freedom of speech, but if it [the opera] was about any other group of people, they wouldn’t be able to get away with it.”

Approximately thirty students aged 14-17 from Rambam Mesivta, located in Lawrence, N.Y., arrived at the rally on a private bus. Students from the school had attended the September 22nd rally as well. “The Met is putting on an opera that they call art, but it’s really glorifying terrorism,” said senior Gabe Motechin, who helped to organize the delegation.

“The problem is that in this historical event there was no conflict—it was a one-sided thing,” said 14-year-old Gidon Kaminer, a student the Heschel School in Manhattan, who was with a group that included his mother and a friend. “A man was shot in the head for no reason and pushed off a boat, so that wouldn’t make for a very interesting opera. In order to create this interesting opera, they have to draw a parallel—they have to create a conflict—they have to humanize them [the terrorists].”

Klinghoffer’s daughters, Lisa and Ilsa, aided by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), requested that the opera not be simulcast or broadcast on the radio as was previously planned. In a statement which will be included in the Met’s playbills, they wrote: “It presents false moral equivalencies without context and offers no real insight into the historical reality and the senseless murder of an American Jew. It rationalizes, romanticizes, and legitimizes the terrorist murder of our father.”

While Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, has defended the inclusion of the opera in this year’s concert schedule, he yielded to the joint request of the Klinghoffer family and the ADL.

Hyman Silverglad, an attorney and resident of the Lower East Side, says he knew the Klinghoffers long before the controversy. He denounced the opera for “stimulating anti-Semitism throughout the world,” and took great offense at the argument that censorship is a violation of first amendment rights. He was pleased to see a young presence at the demonstration. He said “it was a sight for sore eyes to finally see young Jewish people taking part in these issues,” many of whom, have “turned off” Jewish affairs due to assimilation.

The Death of Klinghoffer premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1991, only six years after the events that it depicts. Many, including former New York Governor George Pataki, have blasted the title alone, which critics say undermines and trivializes Klinghoffer’s brutal murder. O­peras give dramatic weight to both the protagonists and antagonists, a compositional technique employed by canonical composers like Mozart and Verdi, and The Death of Klinghoffer is no exception. Protesters say they are not enraged over the fact that the terrorists have arias, but rather that they sing lyrics many regard as anti-Semitic. (For example, “whenever poor men are gathered they can find Jews getting fat.”)

Siblings Sam and Shayna Schochet, aged 24 and 19 respectively, took issue with the how the opera frames the politics of Klinghoffer’s murder, arguing that it portrays the hijackers as “freedom fighters.”

“From my own estimation, I conclude that they are sympathizing with the Palestinian terrorists,” said Sam.

Shana added, “they’re humanizing the terrorist… At the end of the day, [Klinghoffer] was a helpless Jewish man who went on a cruise with his wife. He was killed. That’s not [the actions of] a freedom fighter; that’s a terrorist.”

(Image: A protester holds up a sign outside the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center on opening night of the opera, ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ on October 20. Credit: Bryan Thomas/Getty)

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