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Singing Arias About Genocide
Now Playing At London's Royal Opera House: The Harrowing Holocaust Tale That Is 'Sophie's Choice'
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 4:39 PM ET Oct 29, 2007

Few subjects seem less suited to the sweeping grandeur of opera than Auschwitz. Yet this weekend London's Royal Opera House will premiere "Sophie's Choice," based on William Styron's best-selling Holocaust novel. In the book, bedraggled lines of Jews are marched from the cattle cars to the extermination chambers, while Styron's Roman Catholic heroine, Sophie--played by Meryl Streep in the 1982 film, for which she won an Oscar--is singled out by a sadistic SS guard. He forces her to make every parent's nightmare choice: one of her two children will live and one will die, and she must decide which or all three will perish. It is a story that unflinchingly explores the enduring ravages of the Holocaust on those who survived.

Despite the difficult subject matter, "Sophie's Choice" may well prove to be London's opera highlight of the year. It combines a first-class cast--headed by the dazzling Austrian mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager--with the charismatic conductor Simon Rattle and renowned director Trevor Nunn (of "Les Miserables" and "Sunset Boulevard" fame). Composer Nicholas Maw, known for his lush, melodic scores, lifted nearly the entire libretto directly from the book. He contends that the lingering horror of the Holocaust makes it particularly good fodder for opera. "It is still something that very much affects us, historically, emotionally, politically," he says, taking a break between rehearsals. "That in itself makes it a very suitable subject for an opera." Novelist Styron agrees. Interviewed by phone from his Connecticut home, he says that the "notion that there's something sacrosanct about the Holocaust" is "an overly inflated idea that it has come time to dismiss." London critic Norman Lebrecht notes that "Sophie's Choice" is merely the latest in a string of operas based on current events--including the hijacking by Palestinian terrorists of the Achille Lauro cruise ship ("The Death of Klinghoffer"), the plight of prisoners on death row ("Dead Man Walking") and the demise of Princess Diana ("When She Died: Death of a Princess").

Still, there are plenty who think that genocide cannot--and should not--be turned into arias. Indeed, music has a particularly fraught connection to the Holocaust: the Nazis reveled in Wagner and Strauss, and even forced Jewish musicians to play while their neighbors and relatives were marched to the gas chambers. Philosopher George Steiner once said that the only appropriate response to the Holocaust was silence. And Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel has argued that turning the Holocaust into fiction cheapens the suffering inflicted in the concentration camps.

So it's not surprising that the production almost didn't come off. Maw first brought his proposal for "Sophie's Choice" to the Royal Opera 10 years ago, but was turned away. "It was considered a dangerous subject," he says. Filmmaker Jeremy Isaacs, who headed the impoverished opera at the time, says its reluctance stemmed not from the content but from concerns about Maw's adaptation--doubts that persist today. "The disquiet in my mind is about using the Holocaust at such a tremendous distance from the source," says Lebrecht. "Maw saw the movie, then read the book, then created this out of it. There is a whiff here of the exploitation of a story for a story's sake, without much concern for the fact that this was a major historical event."

But Maw & Co. seem to have allayed most fears. Even Isaacs expresses confidence in their respectful treatment of the subject. Styron, an avowed admirer of Maw, says he is quite pleased with the composer's libretto. Perhaps the most difficult task fell to set designer Rob Howell, who had to entice audiences without sugarcoating the horrors. Looking through boxes of photographic evidence from the Holocaust, he found inspiration not in the neat, orderly prints but in some "quite jarred photographs, jolty images," he says. "That imperfect presentation lent a greater sense of scale to the event."

Now it is up to audiences to determine the fate of "Sophie's Choice." At the end of Styron's novel, the narrator, a young writer who is in love with Sophie but unable to help put her demons to rest, feels "Europe's putrid blood rushing through my arteries and veins. Auschwitz still stalked my soul as well as hers." Such anguish continues to resonate today. In "Sophie's Choice," the Royal Opera House is carrying on Verdi's tradition of using personal tragedy to force audiences to reflect on the greater themes of love and death. Rather than betray the memories of those who perished in the Holocaust, "Sophie's Choice" will do its part to guarantee that they live on.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/66719