Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" is set to thrill audiences at Israel's Masada Opera Festival this month, but the German composer's Nazi sympathies will not end a ban on playing Wagner, organizers say.
Orff's "Cantata," comprising 24 poems, sung mostly in Latin, is one of the most popular pieces in classical music, particularly the majestic opening bars, "O Fortuna." For decades, it has also been performed in Israel.
Credit: Reuters
But Bavarian-born Orff's link to the Nazi era, where the work was also hugely popular after its premiere in Frankfurt in 1937, has not sparked the same antagonism in Israel as the music of Richard Wagner, Adolf Hitler's favorite composer.
For years, Wagner's music has been unofficially banned in Israel as it has raised the ire of some Israelis and Holocaust survivors who say his works rekindle the memory of Nazi Germany's slaughter of 6 million Jews during World War II.
"I don't think that in the [death] camps in Auschwitz and Treblinka they played Carl Orff, but they played Wagner before [people] went to the gas chambers," Israel Opera music director, Daniel Oren, told Reuters.
"The people [who survived and] are alive now -- there are not so many -- but it's very, very painful for them to hear Wagner, and I don't want to cause them more pain," he added.
The opera's artistic administrator, Michael Ajzenstadt, said Orff would have probably been glad to see his vision realized on such a grand scale.
"The music is the message, the art is the message. The artist [Carl Orff] is there. What he would have thought about it, who knows? I'm sure that he would have loved to see such a grand production of his work performed, no matter where," he said.
The opera's managing director, Hana Munitz, said she did not expect Wagner would be played in Israel "for quite a few years."
"Wagner we are not doing and probably will not do for quite a few years in the future because this is more of a symbolic difficulty, so I won't go there," she said.
Assaf Shakhnai, a member of the audience who watched the dress rehearsal of "Carmina Burana," shared his excitement after the show.
"I didn't know what to expect with regards to performance, but the music is really fascinating," he said.
"Carmina Burana," whose texts tell of nature and life's excesses, is hugely popular throughout the world but is mostly performed as a choral work in concert halls.
The dramatized version on Masada's enormous open-air stage has been designed by Polish director Michal Znaniecki, with the Kielce Dance Theater providing colorful movement on brightly lit, innovative sets.
The music is performed by the Rishon Lezion Orchestra with the Israel Opera Chorus and the Ankor Choir under British conductor James Judd.
The current festival, being held over the coming two weekends, is staging four performances of Puccini's opera "Tosca" and two of "Carmina Burana."
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