User:Rbrwr/sandbox5


 * This page has been prepared to help Wikipedia editors analyse an apparent violation of copyright on the site. It thus has to make (fair) use of the apparently violating material. It will be deleted once the matter is properly resolved. --rbrwr&plusmn; 11:56, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER

OPERA IN TWO ACTS BY JOHN COOLIDGE ADAMS


 * Headings don't count.

In 1985 Adams began a collaboration with the poet Alice Goodman and stage director Peter Sellars that resulted in two operas, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer.


 * This sentence from http://www.cabrillomusic.org/2004/a-adams.html

Nixon in China highlighted the ultra-conservative president making the astonishing step of attempting a rapport with the ultra-communist country.


 * This seems to be original.

After a successful run of Nixon in China at the English National Opera in 2000, a new film of that opera, directed by Peter Sellars is to be made in January of 2004.


 * From http://www.bbc.co.uk/orchestras/symphonyorchestra/about_us/johnadams.shtml which is another version of the biography at cabrillomusic.com, and could equally be regarded as the source of that material. Apparently it's an official biography from his publishers, Boosey & Hawkes.

This year (2003) a new filmed version of The Death of Klinghoffer, Adams’s second opera, has been produced and directed by Penny Woolcock, for Channel Four.


 * This is probably reworded enough to be OK; the information is apparently from http://www.cabrillomusic.org/2004/a-adams.html.

The story was of the 1984 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian terrorists and their eventual murdering of one of the passengers, a retired, wheelchair-bound American Jew named Leon Klinghoffer.


 * Now we move on to http://www.earbox.com/sub-html/comp-details/kling-de.html

The libretto was disturbing for many because it gave voice to the sufferings of both Jews and Palestinians. The words of the Exiled Palestinians that open the opera hit some listeners as a provocation.


 * This is slightly reworded from http://www.earbox.com/sub-html/comp-details/kling-de.html

My father’s house was razed In nineteen forty-eight When the Israelis Passed over our street


 * This is a fair-use quotation from the work in question, though it also appears in http://www.earbox.com/sub-html/comp-details/kling-de.html

The hijacking itself is portrayed in all its terror and pandemonium. Then follows a long, ruminative scene, during which one of the terrorists, Mamoud, has a long dialogue with the ship captain, recounting his childhood in a refugee camp and the violence that has permeated his every waking moment.

Then follows the rapid unraveling of the terrorists plans and the inexplicable decision to execute Klinghoffer. No one knows why this particular man was singled out for execution. Was he simply an impulsive sacrifice? Had he, through some exchange of words, taunted the terrorists? Or was he, simply because of his handicap, an encumbrance? In a scene involving Leon Klinghoffer and one of the terrorists the desperate impossibility of healing the conflict is summed up in a blistering exchange of accusations, vicious argument, and total degradation of the confrontation.


 * ''These two paragraphs are from http://www.earbox.com/sub-html/comp-details/kling-de.html

The Death of Klinghoffer opened in 1991. It is a musically demanding work, but its reception was largely governed by the highly charged nature of its subject rather than by its music. When The Death of Klinghoffer was given six performances at the San Francisco Opera in the fall of 1992, each performance was picketed by a Jewish pressure group who also wrote letters of condemnation to the local press. Shortly after, the Los Angeles Music Center Opera, one of the work’s co-commissioners, cancelled its planned series of performances without any explanation. Since then the opera has not been produced in an American opera house.


 * This is also from http://www.earbox.com/sub-html/comp-details/kling-de.html, but slightly cut down and reworded.

The film, shot on location in the Mediterranean and on board a cruise liner, breaks new ground in the presentation of opera on film. The composer conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in this film.


 * Here we're back to http://www.cabrillomusic.org/2004/a-adams.html.