It Must Be “Better Than It Sounds”

In an arguable judgment, Mark Twain said of Wagnerian opera that it must “be better than it sounds.”

Michael Walsh’s scabrous, repulsive defense of “The Death of Klinghoffer,” being staged by the Met, elevates moral relativism into the Sermon on the Mount while at the same time denouncing critics of caricaturish anti-Semitism for the “dehumanization” of the Palestinian people.

What “Klinghoffer” offers is a mini-ballet portraying biblical Hagar and Ishmael birthing the Arabs in the desert as a justification for later payback in the form of Palestinian murders of Jews, while imagining mythical Palestinians on the beach in 1948 trying to repulse equally mythical IDF tank crews, and also reducing Jewish complaints against terror to something like bourgeois irritable bowel syndrome.

I’ll take any time Wagner’s grand guignole apocalypse over slyly bigoted, under-impressive arias and Walsh’s nickelodeon ride though opera history posing as defense of “artistic freedom.”

The best than can be said for the Met is that those responsible for “Klinghoffer” have the political right to make damnable fools of themselves, while true defenders of both freedom and art are perfectly correct for flaying the hides of our postmodern pseudo-artistes.

See http://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/2014/10/19/the-death-of-klinghoffer/