‘Klinghoffer’ Composer Responds to Met’s Decision; New York Times, 6/18/14

Michael Cooper, New York Times; ‘Klinghoffer’ Composer Responds to Met’s Decision:

"Mr. Gelb, a champion of Mr. Adams’s who was the first to bring his operas to the Met stage, has faced sharp criticism for canceling the “Klinghoffer” transmission from some music critics and arts administrators. (Nicholas Kenyon, the managing director of the Barbican Center in London, posted on Twitter that the Met’s decision was “shocking shortsighted and indefensible.”)

Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of the PEN American Center, which promotes free expression, called the decision troubling. “We are deeply troubled by the decision of an arts organization to withhold a performance not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because someone, somewhere might misconstrue it,” she said in an email.

Mr. Gelb said that the Met remains committed to the work.

“The Met is resolute on going forward with it, and the fact that we offered this compromise outside the United States doesn’t mean that we’re prepared to compromise on artistic integrity inside the opera house,” Mr. Gelb said in an interview on Tuesday. “This is a great work of art that should be seen and heard at the Met, where it belongs.”

Mr. Adams, one of America’s foremost composers, said that he did not understand why the cinema transmission and radio broadcast were still being canceled if Mr. Gelb and the Anti-Defamation League agreed that the work is not anti-Semitic, though some critics have said otherwise. And he said he had been concerned by what he called “the really completely unjust charges” about his opera, especially by people who have not heard it."