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The New York Times
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To the Editor:
Two accusations have been leveled against the John Adams-Alice Goodman opera "The Death of Klinghoffer": that it is anti-emotional and that it is anti-Semitic (review, Sept. 7). Both are misjudged.
"Klinghoffer" follows in the tradition of musical passion plays. The passions of Bach, and his most serious cantatas, are its closest relatives. These works place the listeners in the presence of the most agonizing moral and emotional dilemma of their lives, require them to inhabit the dilemma for a period and make the experience bearable by shaping it in the most beautiful form.
A work like "Klinghoffer" must deflect passion to allow engagement, contemplation and finally a deeper, less reflexive emotional response. Its goal is not to inflame -- as traditional opera does -- but to mediate.
The libretto is denser, less direct, more mysterious than an opera libretto; and the music favors contrapuntal plumbing of meanings over direct speechlike setting of words.
Half of my heritage is Jewish, and I found nothing anti-Semitic about the work. In war, to humanize the enemy is to be guilty of treason; those Americans who in their minds are at war with Palestine will react to "Klinghoffer" accordingly. Humanizing is not condoning.
The creators of "The Death of Klinghoffer" -- Mr. Adams, Ms. Goodman, the choreographer Mark Morris and the director Peter Sellars -- have created for us the closest analogue to the experience of Bach's audience attending his most demanding works. CONRAD CUMMINGS New York, Sept. 20, 1991 The writer is a composer and associate professor of music at Oberlin Conservatory.
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