THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER • FLORENCE

★★★★★☆

REVIEW THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER, FLORENCE: A RARE, BOLD AND INTENSE OPERA EXPERIENCE

The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino opera festival opened with a rare and bold production of John Adams’s notorious masterpiece The Death of Klinghoffer—one of the most controversial and morally challenging works in recent opera history. GOT TO SEE THIS was invited to the highly anticipated VIP premiere, which turned out to be a five-star opera experience.

The opera is based on the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and the murder of the American-Jewish businessman Leon Klinghoffer, who was shot and thrown overboard along with his wheelchair. A macabre premise that, since its world premiere in Brussels in 1991, has made the work politically explosive

Musically, Adams moves far from traditional opera and closer to an oratorio: grand, monumental choral passages, neoclassical minimalism, and a sustained, pulsating rhythm that paints anxiety, desperation, and collective grief in massive blocks of sound.

You know how it ends—yet for long stretches you forget to breathe. That’s how intense it is.

Adams has consistently refused to take a political stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict and has maintained that the work seeks rather to expose human fear, powerlessness, and desperation.

Nevertheless, the opera has ever since been criticized for providing a form of legitimization for the terrorists simply by portraying them as human beings rather than instruments in the service of terrorism. This moral unease is an integral part of the work’s power.

In Florence, the opera is staged by Luca Guadagnino, who is best known as an international film director for Call Me by Your Name and Challengers—and not least for his striking 2018 reinterpretation of Dario Argento’s Suspiria. This marks his debut on the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino opera stage, and his vision is distinctly cinematic.

The stage scenes unfold in impressively beautiful sequences and tableaux: Elevator-driven scene changes, claustrophobic cabins, and ship decks glide into an open, nocturnal starry sky that almost functions as an inner psychological space. The transitions feel like cuts that create a continuous flow. Guadagnino lets the music and images work in tension and stillness.

Conductor Lawrence Renes stands as one of the most experienced Adams interpreters today and delivers a musical performance with precision and nerve. The large choral sections are kept under tight control, while the underlying rhythm drives the work forward with almost mechanical inevitability.

The central roles are carried by a strong ensemble: Daniel Okulitch is the Captain.

Laurent Naouri is Leon Klinghoffer—and best of all is the top English name Susan Bullock in her poignant interpretation of Marilyn Klinghoffer.

The chorus is supplemented by a dozen dancers who embody inner psychological states in choreographed tableaux of varying quality—a device that does not seriously detract from the whole, but nor does it always add depth.

All in all, this production stands as a rare and harrowing opera experience: a work that is as morally problematic as it is musically overwhelming.

Five stars from GOT TO SEE THIS for an uncompromising staging of an uncomfortable moral dilemma.