Director Tom Morris hits choppy waters with Achille Lauro opera

New project: Tom Morris
12 April 2012

War Horse creator Tom Morris is to make his opera-directing debut with perhaps the most controversial of the past 50 years.

Morris will take the helm for the London premiere of American composer John Adams's 1991 opera The Death of Klinghoffer, condemned by some Jews for its depiction of the 1985 hijacking of cruise liner Achille Lauro.

Critics said the work appeared sympathetic to the Palestinian hijackers who killed Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish-American passenger who used a wheelchair.

The work is being staged by English National Opera in what artistic director John Berry hailed today as "the most ambitious season in our history". The premiere is one of 11 new productions, including four by living composers.

Although Channel 4 made a film of the work, actual stagings of Klinghoffer are so infrequent that Adams will attend the opening in September. "It is rarely performed because opera houses are still worried about the political fallout," Mr Berry said.

Morris, who has often worked with music including supporting the team behind Jerry Springer - The Opera, was "a great director, a great thinker" who would bring all his visual imagination to John Adams's work, Mr Berry added. "He believes with me that opera is about the most powerful art form to take on big issues."

The 2011/12 season also includes the UK premieres of Detlev Glanert's Caligula, and The Passenger by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, inspired by a Holocaust survivor who "saw" her Auschwitz guard while sailing to Brazil.

Revivals include Anthony Minghella's much-loved version of Puccini's Madam Butterfly.

The season culminates with the London premiere of Daman Albarn's Doctor Dee, about Renaissance scientist and spy John Dee, as part of the London 2012 Festival celebrating the Olympic Games.

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