Metropolitan Opera New York
The ‘Coalition Against the Met Terror Opera’ (CATO) has announced a ‘massive’ protest for September 22. Prior to the opening performance of the new season, CATO activists want to declare their disgust with an “opera promoting terrorism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Zionism », i.e. John Adams’s ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’, which opens October 20.
“The Metropolitan Opera, led by its director, Peter Gelb, persists in presenting ‘The Death Of Klinghoffer’ this fall, despite the fact that incontrovertible evidence exists in the libretto by Alice Goodman, and in remarks made by Gelb and the composer, John Adams, that the opera supports sympathy for terrorists and hatred for Jews and Israel,” CATO said in a statement.
“The story of the execution of Leon Klinghoffer by PLO terrorists in 1985, on the hi-jacked Achille Lauro, is well known. The handicapped Klinghoffer was selected to be murdered because he was a Jew. The terrorists shot him and threw him overboard in his wheelchair. The story is a frightening one and was an omen of the terrorism that was to come from the PLO that has morphed into ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, Fatah and a host of others.”
Peter Gelb agreed to cancel the HD screenings of the opera, but kept the performance in the program.
