James Maddalena, Janice Felty, Thomas Hammons, Thomas Young, Eugene Perry, Sanford Sylvan, Stephanie Friedman and Sheila Nadler; London Opera Chorus; Orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon; Kent Nagano, conductor. Elektra Nonesuch 7559-79281-2—2 CDs.
John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer grew out of the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled Jewish-American passenger. Yet this is not a conventional historical opera. Adams and librettist Alice Goodman largely abandon realistic action in favor of something closer to an oratorio: choruses meditate upon exile, dispossession and suffering, while the principals seem at times less like ordinary characters than figures in a modern Passion.
That approach has made the opera enduringly controversial. The opposing grievances are presented with a ritualized gravity that some listeners will find illuminating and others morally evasive. Whatever one thinks of its politics, however, the musical achievement is formidable. Adams moves well beyond the bright surfaces and bustling public spectacle of Nixon in China. The language remains recognizably his—pulsing figures, slowly changing harmonies and glittering orchestral colors—but the mood is darker, more searching and frequently elegiac.
This original recording could hardly have received a more persuasive performance. From the ominous F-minor chords at the beginning, Kent Nagano establishes a feeling of inexorable movement. He never treats the score as merely an exercise in Minimalism. The repetitions accumulate emotional weight, the orchestral colors deepen, and the great choruses rise with the solemn force of communal lamentation. The Orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon plays with remarkable concentration, bringing clarity to Adams’s intricate textures without sacrificing their sensual richness.
The cast is uniformly strong. James Maddalena gives the Captain dignity and philosophical weight, creating a man struggling to preserve order as events move beyond his control. Sanford Sylvan’s Leon Klinghoffer is the recording’s moral and emotional center. His singing is direct, grave and deeply human, particularly in the “Aria of the Falling Body,” where Adams briefly suspends the political argument and confronts the physical reality of murder. Sheila Nadler’s Marilyn Klinghoffer answers with a grief that is painful precisely because it avoids operatic display. Janice Felty, Thomas Hammons, Thomas Young, Eugene Perry and Stephanie Friedman complete a cast capable of making the work’s formalized characters register as living presences.
At more than two hours, The Death of Klinghoffer demands patience, and its predominantly static dramaturgy may work more naturally on disc than in the theatre. Without the distraction of staging, one can hear how carefully Adams balances dramatic confrontation with choral reflection. The recording is spacious and detailed, allowing both the percussion-driven climaxes and the quietest orchestral passages to make their effect.
This is not comfortable listening, nor should it be. The opera’s treatment of terrorism, historical grievance and Jewish suffering continues to invite argument. But as a recording, this original Nonesuch set remains indispensable: powerful, beautifully performed and emotionally disturbing. It captures Adams at the point where the exhilaration of his early style opened into something darker and more ambitious.
Verdict: A commanding original-cast recording of one of Adams’s most challenging and important works. Nagano’s disciplined conducting and Sylvan’s profoundly moving Klinghoffer make it the version by which the opera should be judged.
