More than 500 people staged a protest demonstration Monday at New York’s Metropolitan Opera to condemn the premiere of the Opera ‘’Death of Klinghoffer,’’ a production they say ‘’promotes terrorism and anti-Semitism.’’
The demonstrators included former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Governor David Paterson. But current Mayor Bill de Blasio defended the right of the Metropolitan Opera to perform the controversial Opera which is based on the 1985 murder of the wheelchair-bound Jewish American Leon Klinghoffer aboard a hijacked cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, by Palestinian terrorists who shot him and dumped him overboard.
“The romanticizing of terrorism only makes a greater threat,” Giuliani told the crowd which gathered at the Lincoln Center.
De Blasio said “the former mayor had a history of challenging cultural institutions when he disagrees with their content0.’’ “I don’t think that’s the American way. The American way is to respect freedom of speech. Simple as that. In a free society we respect that. We don’t have to agree with what’s in the exhibit, but we agree with the right of the artist and the cultural institution to put that forward to the public.”
“There’s an anti-Semitism problem in this world today, particularly in Western Europe, that worries me greatly. That’s where my focus is. I don’t think an opera is what the focal point should be right now,” he said. “The only thing I know about the opera is that the Metropolitan Opera has a right to show it.”
Just before the curtain was raised on the first of eight performances, boos and cheers filled the Metropolitan Opera House. About 40 minutes into the two-hour, 50-minute production, a man started yelling repeatedly: “The murder of Klinghoffer will never be forgiven!” A woman in the audience replied, “No one here is trying to forgive.”
Police said one person was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
The controversy around the opera led Met officials to cancel the production’s live movie theater and radio broadcasts, planned for next month. Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, who is Jewish, said the decision was a compromise. It added in a statement: “The fact that ‘Klinghoffer’ grapples with the complexities of an unconscionable real-life act of violence does not mean it should not be performed. ... ‘Klinghoffer’ is neither anti-Semitic nor does it glorify terrorism.”
Republican lawmaker Pete King disagreed with the Met’s thinking. “Any opera that claims to share the moral equivalency between Israel and Palestine is immoral itself,” he told the demonstrators. “If this opera were honest, it would be called '‘The Murder of Klinghoffer.''