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Jewish World Review
May 18, 2009
/ 24 Iyar 5769
Operatic perversion of ‘Samson’ is symptom of cultural decline and hate
By
Jonathan Tobin
The rise of a generation of directors who commit vandalism rather than bringing new insights is a fact of life in contemporary opera, especially in Europe. It is a symptom of the same deconstructionist school of thought that has turned the study of literature on its head with pseudo-scholars claiming there is no such thing as objective truth and that the text of any work can be separated from its original meaning with impunity
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The impact of opera on contemporary politics is fairly limited these days.
Unlike the 19th century when new operas by composers like Giuseppe Verdi
would often be seen as important political statements, the contemporary
lyric theater is usually the preserve of an elite that most people don't
care about. But every once in a while something can happen at an opera house
that makes its way onto the news pages.
Such an event happened earlier this month when a new production of Camille
Saint-Saens biblical set piece 'Samson et Dalila' had its premiere at the
Flanders Opera in Antwerp. A two-man directing team, Omri Nitzan, an Israeli
and Amir Nizar Zuabi, a Palestinian, conceived the new staging of the opera.
But rather than a conventional rendition of what was written as a fairly
static work for the theater, Nitzan and Zuabi decided to turn the piece on
its head. In their version, the Philistines oppressing the Hebrews were
portrayed as Israelis and the Hebrews as the Palestinians.
According to The New York Times this included scenes in which 'Jews, in
fancy dress, dance atop a shiny, black, two-tiered set, oblivious to the
swarm of robed Palestinians under their feet.' Elsewhere in the show,
'Dalila's Jewish handmaidens, in red underpants, sprawl on their backs, legs
spread in the air, helping to seduce Samson' and 'Israeli soldiers clad in
black humiliate blindfolded Palestinians and shoot a Palestinian child, who
reappears as a kind of leitmotif during the opera.' And after 'Israeli
soldiers dance orgiastically with their phallic rifles,' the character of
Samson, wearing a 'dynamite-loaded vest' ends the opera with a suicide
blast.
Shocking as this may sound, in the world of opera today such 'artistic
license' is far from rare when it comes to putting on the classics. Anyone
entering an opera house these days is as likely to see the works of Mozart,
Verdi, or Wagner set in a time and place that the composer never envisioned
as they are a traditional staging. Political agendas, almost always with a
left-wing slant, as well as the sort of vulgarity seen in Antwerp, are
commonplace.
The rise of a generation of directors who commit vandalism rather than
bringing new insights is a fact of life in contemporary opera, especially in
Europe. It is a symptom of the same deconstructionist school of thought that
has turned the study of literature on its head with pseudo-scholars claiming
there is no such thing as objective truth and that the text of any work can
be separated from its original meaning with impunity.
But the Antwerp 'Samson' must also be understood as part of the ongoing
campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel. Essential to this trend is the
claim that the Jews aren't really the Jews. In order to treat Israel's right
of self-defense against terrorists and states that seek to destroy it as
inherently immoral —a standard no rational person would seek to impose on
any other country — you have to impose a new identity on the Israelis.
The most popular way of doing so is to claim that the Jews are Nazis.
Such claims have become popular in Europe as well as throughout the Muslim
world. Such juxtaposition is both offensive and an absolute falsehood since
Israel doesn't seek to exterminate the Palestinians as the Nazis did of the
Jews, merely to try and stop them from committing mayhem.
But when Nazis aren't available, turning the tables on the Jews vis-a-vis
the Palestinians will do just as nicely. Yet one of the problems that
vandals such as Nitzan and Zuabi run into when they parachute their ideology
into innocent operas is that the text often contradicts them. This requires
their Belgium audience (which, unlike an audience in say, New York, probably
understands the French language in which the piece is sung) to believe that
when in the first act Samson rallies the Jews to overthrow their Philistine
oppressors, 'Israel romps ta chaine' — Israel break your chains — he doesn't
really mean 'Israel' but Palestine. This is interesting because in this
oratorio-like opera, the Jews are the good guys but don't get very much
interesting music to sing. By contrast, the Philistines get all the good
numbers including a really stomping Bacchanale just before the Temple of
Dagon comes crashing down on their heads.
This artistic atrocity aroused the ire of Antwerp's Jewish community but
when one Jew expressed his outrage and fear that the production would stir
up anti-Semitism to the general director of the opera, reportedly he was
told 'that if the situation for Jews were really so precarious here, they
should leave.'
Interestingly, New York Times critic and columnist Michael Kimmelman reacted
to this invitation for the Jews to leave Europe with dismay about the bad
taste of the comment but not to slander against the State of Israel and
supporters. 'Rage,' Kimmelman wrote about the incident, 'is a perfectly
sane response to the Israeli occupation. And all art is political in the
end.' One can argue in response that had the Palestinians been even
marginally interested in sharing the country and living in peace with the
Jews, they might have accepted any number of peace offers over the course of
the last century. Even more to the point, Gaza, the setting of the final
scene of the opera, is currently occupied by Hamas, not Israel.
The inversion by which the Islamist murderers of Hamas bent on annihilation
of Israel become the soulful Jewish sufferers in 'Samson' is more than just
another play on the familiar David becoming Goliath theme that has gained
traction ever since the Jews started winning wars of self-defense rather
than being slaughtered en masse. Put in the context of an opera whose point
is the triumph of faith over violence and sex, it is a way by which
contemporary Jews can be stripped of any connection to their homeland and
their heritage. The fact that one of the persons responsible for this is an
Israeli Jew does not make it any less misleading. That is especially true
when this sort of work gives a boost to the revival of anti-Semitism in
Europe.
Kimmelman thinks this sort of a 'Samson' could not have been produced in New
York where presumably the Jews are not ready to be told to flee. As it
happens, the production of the piece performed at the Metropolitan Opera
since 1998 does take the opposite point of view. That version, created by
English Jew Elijah Moshinsky, has the effrontery to portray the Jews in
'Samson' as, well, Jews. Though no uniformed Nazis are seen onstage,
Moshinsky's direction evokes the Holocaust with Jews in religious garb being
oppressed by an enemy whose prime characteristic is a primitive and violent
paganism.
This, too, may be a case, as Kimmelman says, that proves that all art is
political. The difference is that one director's vision is based on the
truth and the other on a lie. The trouble is, in an intellectual milieu in
which those concepts no longer exist, it is all too easy to imagine a world
in which Israel and the Jews can be eliminated too.
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JWR contributor Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of Commentary magazine.
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