Barenboim dares to play Wagner in Jerusalem

[Daybelys]

Protesters screamed "fascist" at Jewish conductor Daniel Barenboim as he led a German orchestra in performing the music of Hitler's favorite composer.

The overture from Richard Wagner's opera "Tristan und Isolde" came at the end of a concert by the Berlin Staatskapelle featuring the music of Schumann and Stravinsky at the Israel Festival, the country's most prestigious arts forum.

The Telegraph newspaper reported that Barenboim turned to the audience and asked if they wanted to hear a piece by Wagner, which had been dropped from the original programme after protests.

Most responded with applause, but an angry minority began protesting with shouts of "fascist" and "go home". One woman screamed "It's a disgrace". Another called out: "It's the music of the concentration camps."

Barenboim appealed to the protesters to let the majority hear what they wanted, reported the Telegraph. He said: "This is my personal encore to them. You can be angry with me, but please don't be angry with the orchestra or the festival management."

Most of the audience, which numbered closed to 2,000, gave Barenboim a standing ovation.

Although the protesters were in the minority, Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, later criticized Barenboim's decision. The news agency Associated Press reported that Sharon said he would rather it had not been played. "There are a lot of people in Israel for whom this issue is very hard, and it is perhaps still too early," Sharon was quoted as saying.

Barenboim apparently decided to defy the protests when a news conference he held last week was interrupted by the ringing of a mobile phone to the tune of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. "I thought if it can be heard on the ring of a telephone, why can't it be played in a concert hall?" he is reported to have said.

But Jerusalem's mayor joined the protests, declaring Barenboim's decision to be "brazen, arrogant, uncivilized and insensitive".

Ephraim Zuroff, of the Simon Weisenthal Centre, went further: "He tried to seduce the Israeli public. The Israeli public refused. He raped us."

Mayor Olmert said the city would have to reconsider its relations with Barenboim, who was born Argentina, grew up in Israel and now lives in Berlin.

Wagner died 50 years before Hitler came to power in Germany, but his music inspired Nazi cultural propaganda. Wagner's works have occasionally been played on Israeli state radio, but have never been performed live without controversy.

The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra tried to play a Wagner piece as an encore back in 1981, but a Holocaust survivor jumped onto the stage, opened his shirt and showed scars inflicted in a Nazi concentration camp. Conductor Zubin Mehta halted the performance.