An Oct. 29 CNSNews.com article by Lauretta Brown is devoted to recounting an interview CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey conducted with actor Tony Lo Bianco about the controversial opera “The Death of Klinghoffer.”
Lo Bianco has no demonstrated expertise about opera or Middle Eastern issues, so it’s unclear why Jeffrey chose to interview him at length about this. Jeffrey never explains why Lo Bianco’s opinion is so important.
Lo Bianco also gave no indication that he has ever viewed the opera in question, so he probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Jeffrey, on the other hand, did admit he has never seen the opera, which didn’t keep him from misrepresenting its contents, asserting that the opera is “glorifying” the Palestinian terrorists’ killing of Klinghoffer, or from complaining that he can’t comprehend how a work of art can allow a bad guy to justify his motives.
In fact, motivation is a driving force of literature and theatrical works, including opera, and villains can have motives just as protagonists do. And experts who, unlike Jeffrey and LoBianco, have actually seen the opera agree that it does not romanticize terror. To claim that giving voice to a villain’s motives equals a creator’s approval of those motives is just another form of the Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy.
The MRC has devoted a lot of time recently to bashing this opera that they have never — and will never — see for themselves.