Adams - Death of Klinghoffer / Randle, Sylvan, Howard, Maltman, Boutros, Melrose, Bickley, LSO

Starring:Sandford Sylvan, Christopher Maltman, Yvonne Howard, Tom Randle, Kamel Boutros, Houda Echouafni, Leigh Melrose (II), Emil Marwa, Susan Bickley, Vivian Tierney, Dean Robinson, Kirsten Blase, Nuala Willis, Joyce Springer, Rebecca R. Palmer, Rachel Bell, Alec Newman, Kelli Hollis, Syan Blake, Lara Clifton
Director: Penny Woolcock
Studio: Philips
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

A Now Way to View Opera
Propulsive Screen Adaptation of a Politically Charged Opera With Multiple Agendas
Unfortunate changes
wrong genre for such a complex subject
I want these men fired!

Adams - Death of Klinghoffer / Randle, Sylvan, Howard, Maltman, Boutros, Melrose, Bickley, LSO
Starring: Sandford Sylvan , Christopher Maltman , Yvonne Howard , Tom Randle , and Kamel Boutros
Director: Penny Woolcock
Manufacturer: Philips
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Similar Items:

Debussy - Pelleas et Melisande / Boulez, Archer, Hagley, Welsh National Opera
John Adams - The Death of Klinghoffer / Nagano, The Orchestra of the Opera de Lyon
Richard Strauss - Die Frau Ohne Schatten / Solti, Studer, Terfel
Delius: A Village Romeo and Juliet / Mackerras, Hampson, Davies, Field, Mora
Nixon in China

ASIN: B0000D9R0E
Release Date: 2003-11-11

Customer Reviews:

A Now Way to View Opera.......2006-11-04

This is a riveting production that almost redefines how one can view opera. With the visual boundries between
film, TV and stage blurred (or melded together) the viewer/listener feels an immediate relevance to an event that is within recent history and very much pertinent to world affairs today. Yet, it is still opera. The production is finely performed and convincingly acted with a touch of realism that is unsettling. The only flaw, if there is one, occurs in the sound mix between action and score. Sometimes Adams' music and the fine performers are under balanced. However, this too seems to be part of the plan where the listener feels like a particpant. It's all wonderfully discomforting.

Propulsive Screen Adaptation of a Politically Charged Opera With Multiple Agendas.......2006-07-12

Director Penny Woolcock deserves an immense amount of credit for providing a vibrant, emotionally expansive if not altogether dramatically effective 2003 screen translation of what was likely the last decade's most controversial opera. What began as an elaborate oratorio in 1991 was renowned composer John Adams' highly emotional "The Death of Klinghoffer", a controversial work with even greater political and emotional resonance post-9/11. The story concerns itself with the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro by members of the Palestinian Liberation Front. It is related in a series of arias and recitatives by critical participants in the situation - the ship's captain and first officer; the four terrorists; and key passengers who were held captive over three days, in particular, the Klinghoffers who were celebrating their 36th wedding anniversary.

Adams' familiar post-minimalist music turns out to be surprisingly compatible with the true-life story, as the propulsive vocal parts blend well with Alice Goodman's politically charged libretto. Sung off-screen to vivid montages, the beautiful choruses provide effective bridges and a broader context to the immediate drama of the opera, an aspect that was likely left quite abstract when sung onstage. The other powerful dimension Woolcock brings to this adaptation is the use of real locations and archived footage to make relevant the opera's overall abstraction to the viewer. This is a brave move since the political situation suddenly becomes actualized with the film. As it turns out, it is a dramatically smart move given that Woolcock has a strong cinematic sense of the story, for instance, she apparently cut twenty minutes of the music to make the story flow better, repositions powerful solo arias to enhance the characters' interactions, and adds often traumatizing historical footage and faux-news reports to give the story even greater realism. Solely from that standpoint, this may be the best screen adaptation of a major opera I have ever seen.

The biggest challenge of this production, however, is Goodman's libretto, which seems intent on supporting both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For instance, the opera takes the bold step of putting Israelis and Nazis on the same plain by comparing images of a post-Holocaust concentration camp with those of a mass grave from the 1982 slaughter at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps. In making such an exerted effort to share the motivation of the terrorists as well as the suffering of the crew and passengers, the drama becomes somewhat diluted by the multiple perspectives. By contrast, look at Paul Greengrass' recent "United 93" for a successful example of shifting varying viewpoints without losing the overall dramatic momentum. Some contend that the opera takes discernible political sides, though I think it's a mistake to brand the work as purely pro-Palestinian since the Klinghoffers are portrayed sympathetically if rather one-dimensionally as people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. In particular, the execution of husband Leon, paralyzed from a stroke and wheelchair-bound, is shown shockingly as the act of a thug more than that of a political terrorist.

Fortunately, Woolcock has recruited world-class singers who are able to tone down their singing for the cameras. The standouts are baritone Christopher Maltman as the conflicted captain; fellow baritone Leigh Melrose, who makes the macho posturing of the aptly named terrorist, "Rambo", feel palpable; and in the film's only comic moment, soprano Kirsten Blasé, who makes her cowering showgirl a convincing media whore. Surprisingly, the Klinghoffers are not given arias to sing until near the end, but mezzo-soprano Yvonne Howard is dynamic as Marilyn especially as she confronts the captain. Baritone Sanford Sylvan, a familiar Adams regular who played Chou En-Lai in "Nixon in China", has one powerful aria sung as a voiceover to an extended, haunting image of his dead body sinking deeper into the ocean. In another interesting voiceover done to accommodate the original opera's doubling of roles, a non-singing actor, Emil Marwa, plays the most vulnerable terrorist, Omar, while mezzo Susan Bickley sings his inner thoughts. The 2003 DVD has a surprising number of extras for an opera production, including a commentary track from Woolcock and various cast members. The best extra is an interesting making-of documentary, "Filming `The Death of Klinghoffer'", which includes tandem interviews with Adams and Woolcock and goes into the major aspects of putting the challenging production together.

Unfortunate changes.......2006-04-30

In the original opera, Adams and Goodman walked the fine line pretty well. Goodman, being part of the "NY Elite" couldn't help but try to equate the plight of the Palestinians to that of the Jews, which is an absurd apples and oranges comparison, but she definitely held back and because of that, the opera is still enjoyable, even as one wishes for perhaps a bit more history.
The film makes no such attempt--quite the opposite--and thus tips over the line, presenting the situations as if they are mirror-images.
Technically, the film is competent, and the adaptation of Adams music is superb. But as a political statement--which it is, despite hand-waving about "presenting both sides"--it is distorted and thus fails.

wrong genre for such a complex subject.......2006-01-30

Given the overwhelming complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you really need to approach the Adams-Goodman opera here with complete ignorance as most do.Opera requires ignorance as an integral component for you to understand it,for it simply encourages it as you move through the work. You will not learn much about any conflict,(certainly modern ones) or any historical subject or place from experiencing an opera, for opera its genre has the the habit of clouding,and misleading the listener into its cloistered conservative content.Take any of oper's Greatest Hits and you will find the power exists actually when subjects are dealt with at a distance as in Mozart(Happy Birthday Wolfgang)where his operas basically say "can we live together. . ." I guess that is impossible in the Middle East,and inner city metropolis.Shakespeare also dealt with historical subjects but the power he saw in dramatic stagecraft ultimatly resides in the distanced projections of it, as in Macbeth or Hamlet,not really dealing with the political consequences of real names, dates,and places,He saw that historical subjects can have myths built around/into themselves further clouding their content; tyranny on the stage is simply that and further simplified in the process,corruption, greed, and resulting poverty are simply that the result of some power enforcing itself on innocents. Likewise you will not learn anything about neither Nixon,China or Mao in Adams "Nixon in China". And so Adams-Goodman collaboration have this conceit then that this work can shed some What? emotive light?, can make people have more compassion for each other?, (Marilyn Klinghoffer is going to see the conflict differently now?), that political players can see the error of their ways? with Klinghoffer here was he the victim of the Palestinians or indirectly of Israel's militaristic approach to solving their problems of occupation and security? One will never know. Opera unfortunately also needs victims and evil-doers, so here the evil-doers are given voice, and I suppose the four teenagers who seized the Achille Lauro who were part of the Palestine Liberation Front,( a splinter group from the PLO run by Mohamed Zeidan(Abdul Abbas)) represents the cause for Palestine?, they are the representatives? Nothing could be further from the truth, but this is Opera,so evil is best portrayed when it is mindless,sacrificial an end unto-itself, so who cares, you buy your ticket and you are simply(in this work)are given the typical "mantra" of prejudiced one-sided views found elsewhere in the media- cultural behemoths. I have a problem with choosing political subjects and music or art. The genre in art chosen must give voice to the complexity of the subject,also render sone element of clarity to the subject matter,otherwise you do both a monstrous disservice. Take Picasso's "Guernica" as a metaphor where there the entire history of art is summoned to portray an atrocity, the wounded soldier with a fixed gaze clutching his sword, the "Pieta",mother weeping holding her dead child, the Angel of Illumination or Darkness,or take Peter Eisenman's massive sculptur in Berlin to the victims of the Holocaust,it is as close one can get to experiencing the "void", the opaque loneness of the human spirit or Fernando Botero's series of paintings on the Abu Gharib prison. I think in relation,in comparison you see how shallow,mediocre and vacuous art/opera can be when the concept and musical stagecraft does not come to deal with the complexity of the subject. Opera and this film version is the wrong genre for this subject.

I want these men fired!.......2005-04-05

I was looking forward to watching this DVD, but thanks to incomptent authoring by Miles Tudor and Philip Rowlands, who botched the 16x9 enhancement so that it doesn't work on all players, including mine, producing a painful image that ought to require these men be subjected to Argento Opera meets Space Warriors 2000, for all two of you who get my joke, as the two similarly screwed up L'Elisir d'amore with Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. Please make sure this disc is compatible with your player before you buy it.

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