That was John Adams' description today of his 1991 opera, "The Death of
Klinghoffer," a film version of which premiered at the San Francisco
International Film Festival.

Penny Woolcock, writer and director of the film, joined Adams at the
Castro Theater, and spoke of what is for her the central idea in the
work: "Presenting multiple points of view" and conveying the notion that
"people who do terrible things are like us, and until we understand and
forgive, there will be unending retribution."

Although she regards Klinghoffer's "cold-blooded murder" as the "heart
of the opera," her writing and direction, Woolcock said, deliberately
expanded exploration of the causes of Palestinian actions.

What are only words in Adams' opera at the beginning of the work,
Palestinians singing of their anger and sorrow, unfolds in the film as
a wrenching visual sequence, showing Israeli military takeover of
Palestinian homes.

This part of the story is never told, the director said, but it's "strongly
balanced by Holocaust scenes - and just as you cannot understand Israel
without the Holocaust, the Palestinian side makes no sense without
understanding what had happened to them" in 1948 and thereafter.

Adams said Woolcock's work is "groundbreaking" in that "this is really
a movie." He recorded the orchestral and choral portions with the London
Symphony in advance, but cast members (except for one) sang on the ship
used as the Achile Lauro, and on Maltese locations as they were performing
in the film.

In an interview before the screening, Woolcock made the same point,
saying that she believes no opera film has been shot "live" like this.
After Adams recorded the orchestra and chorus, and made "safety tracks"
with the singers (eventually discarded), the music was played during
filming, at a low level, from hidden speakers.

"As we were filming on the ship," Woolcock says, " we had an assistant
conductor with a tray in front of him, suspended from his neck, and a
monitor on it, showing Adams conducting during the studio recording.
We would run around, the cameramen, the technicians, and the assistant
conductor - and the singers were acting, shooting and singing, looking
into the camera and keeping the conductor in their peripheral vision."

She worked with the singers as actors, "had to train the hijackers how
to hold the Kalashnikovs, so that they were not standing around, as if
holding spears." After each take, Woolcock would look at the film from
her point of view, while the assistant conductor checked the music against
the score.

Except for the hijacker Omar (a male soprano for whom no singer could
be found who "looked right"), every bit of singing was shot live. "You
have a different kind of acoustic, not necessarily beautiful, but not
what you usually hear either," says the director.

Born to English parents in Buenos Aires, and raised in Uruguay and
Argentina, Woolcock has long worked with the BBC in London, specializing
in made-for-TV films. One, a reworking of "Macbeth" in a contemporary
housing project, eventually served as the example of her work to win
Adams over.

Still, Woolcock's involvement with "Klinghoffer" came about as a surprise
all around, not least to the director herself. "The music thing..." she
says, trailing off, as if still not having a handle on explaining "how
it came about."

"You see, I go to concerts, once or twice a month, but I am not educated
in any way... and yet I had a passion for John's music ever since I
walked into a record store and heard an excerpt from `Nixon in China'."

Opera had an even small role in her life before. "I go to the opera,
but...  I mean, there is something magical about going in and everybody's
singing and the suspension of disbelief, and it's fantastic, but often,
there is also something quite ridiculous about it."

She recalls the time when she persuaded, "dragged" her son, then a child,
to see "Don Giovanni," and "they were singing about the lovely Donna
Anna and then she sort of barreled on stage, a middle-aged woman, hefty,
and I will never forget the look on my son's face: `how can you bring
me here, to this?!'.

"You expect that this is how it's done and what's moving is the music,
and I think it's very rare that you can really buy into the story,"
Woolcock says, allowing that her view on making opera more realistic
and relevant is still not a majority opinion.

And yet, when she attended a concert of "Klinghoffer" excerpts in
London and formed this "completely outlandish idea to make a real movie
out of the opera," Channel 4 officials immediately agreed to the project.
"They told me that literally on the previous day there was a meeting to
consider `what are we going to do about opera?'" and Woolcock's vision
filled the bill exactly.  She received the same instant agreement from
Adams' representatives at Boosey & Hawkes, who told her that `we've been
wondering why nobody made a film' of the opera.

When Adams agreed to the project, he told Woolcock: "I hope you'll be
really radical and adventurous." The two have agreed to another joint
project, but because of previous commitments for both, it won't happen
until 2005.  Meanwhile, Woolcock is working on a film about gambling.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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