Subscribe to Print Edition | Mon., October 29, 2007 Cheshvan 17, 5768 | | Israel Time: 10:13 (EST+7)
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Conductor Daniel Barenboim (AP)
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Last update - 17:42 17/10/2007
Barenboim: New Wagner staging would make Hitler 'turn in grave'
By The Associated Press

An opera by Richard Wagner - whose music and anti-Semitic writings influenced Adolf Hitler - will be performed at an open-air theater built under the Nazi regime by an orchestra made up of Israeli and Arab musicians and conducted by a Jew.

Star conductor Daniel Barenboim told Germany's Die Zeit newspaper that the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which he co-founded, plans next year to perform the first act of Wagner's Die Walkuere at Berlin's Waldbuehne - an arena built as part of the complex for the 1936 Olympics by the Nazis.

"Can you imagine that?" Barenboim was quoted as saying in the interview, released Wednesday. "The Waldbuehne was built by Hitler. The music is Wagner. Played by us! Hitler and Wagner would turn in their graves."
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Barenboim said the Divan Orchestra, made up of young musicians from Israel, the Palestinian territories and neighboring Arab countries, is clearly the most important musical project of his life.

He and the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said founded the group in 1999 in a gesture for peaceful coexistence in the Middle East.

"I had long pondered how it was possible that such gruesome despots like Hitler and Stalin could be such huge lovers of music," he said. My explanation: "For them the music was a kind of secret garden, their own realm, that had nothing to do with real life."

Barenboim, who was born in Argentina and holds Israeli citizenship, has been known to make provocative musical selections in the past.

In 2001 he caused an uproar in Israel when he broke the country's unofficial ban on Wagner and led the Berlin Staatskapelle Orchestra in a performance of part of the opera Tristan und Isolde.

He said the Divan Orchestra has also played the opera and that it was the Israeli musicians who chose it - for the pure instrumental reason that it gave the brass section a lot to play.

"It had purely musical reasoning," he told Die Zeit. "With Wagner it is never about the politics or Wagner the person, but about his great music."

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  1.   A victory for whom? 15:28  |  Ilan 17/10/07
  2.   Nothing against Wagner, but much against Boinbaum 16:00  |  Hannah 17/10/07
  3.   Why can`t a man of his talents do things to help the Jews? 16:07  |  Leon 17/10/07
  4.   Turn in his grave (Hitler) 16:17  |  David Nigel Braham 17/10/07
  5.   Barenboim 16:31  |  Stephane 17/10/07
  6.   Funny thing 16:33  |  Peter 17/10/07
  7.   Empathy for Hannah # 2 16:41  |  Empathy 4 Palestine 17/10/07
  8.   No wonder why Barenboim is leftist 16:47  |  Gene 17/10/07
  9.   so-called "Hannah" 16:48  |  mich 17/10/07
  10.   No jokes about Daniel Barenboim! 16:50  |  Jonathan S 17/10/07
  11.   nerated ByReal Salvation Can Be Ge Modernizing Ourselves 16:53  |  Modernity 17/10/07
  12.   #9, so-called mich 17:06  |  Hannah 17/10/07
  13.   #10, Jonathan S. 17:09  |  Hannah 17/10/07
  14.   Go Further! Go Dadaist! 17:12  |  Yosemite 17/10/07
  15.   Pityful & Disgraceful 17:16  |  kobi 17/10/07
  16.   Bad boy Barenboim 17:24  |  Ethel 17/10/07
  17.   Hannah the visionary and Barenboim the non entity 18:03  |  H 17/10/07
  18.   Michel , thankyou,... 18:03  |  akiva (zionist) 17/10/07
  19.   #12 -- So-called Hannah 18:04  |  mich 17/10/07
  20.   IMHO 18:04  |  David Isarel 17/10/07
  21.   Why should Mr. Barenboim be immune from criticism? 18:25  |  Serge 17/10/07
  22.   barenboim 18:45  |  elliot 17/10/07
  23.   To Quote Wagner: The Music Itself Enacts Racial Purification 18:55  |  Ovadiah ben Avraham 17/10/07
  24.   Give barenboim what he deserves 19:34  |  Michael O. 17/10/07
  25.   #12, so-called Hannah, 19:39  |  mich 17/10/07
  26.   Of pâté and Parsifal 21:48  |  Morris Valentine 17/10/07
  27.   helping Jews 22:50  |  sweis Melbourne 17/10/07
  28.   Double first 23:15  |  Motic 17/10/07
  29.   To #25 03:28  |  Ahmed Habib, Ph.D 18/10/07
  30.   To Morris Valentine 03:35  |  Cynthia Bixby, M.D. 18/10/07
  31.   Barenboim 03:43  |  Eli Wiesel 18/10/07
  32.   #28, Dear Dr. Habib, You seem to be able to diagnose 05:05  |  Max Zinger,P.Chimist 18/10/07
  33.   Left brain Right brain 05:53  |  mike 18/10/07
  34.   STRANGE BEDFELLOWS:MAYBE BARENBOIM BE LAID TO REST NEXT TO HITLER 05:55  |  VOICE))) 18/10/07
  35.   Barenboim 06:02  |  Carole Gotlieb 18/10/07
  36.   like a great gasbag-filled with own hot air! 06:46  |  Mark 18/10/07
  37.   but Israeli`s rules 07:11  |  dani.a 18/10/07
  38.   Gotlieb#35 07:29  |  ron 18/10/07
  39.   Great conductors 07:51  |  debbie 18/10/07
  40.   Hannah dear 08:44  |  Yoav Naor 18/10/07
  41.   Bitter Hannah 09:11  |  sh 18/10/07
  42.   Hannah again 09:16  |  sh 18/10/07
  43.   #31 Elie Wiesel 09:40  |  Marilyn 18/10/07
  44.   Hanna 09:50  |  rasjie 18/10/07
  45.   Ahmed Habib PHD, a very busy man 09:57  |  FOX 18/10/07
  46.   Third World Doctor Phenomena 10:10  |  FOX 18/10/07
  47.   "The Piano has been drinking" 10:54  |  FOX 18/10/07
  48.   Wagner a la` Mark Twain 11:47  |  eddie - Haifa 18/10/07
  49.   FOX and the sour grapes in his vineyard 12:11  |  sh 18/10/07
  50.   barenbaum 12:43  |  GABE 18/10/07
  51.   #44 AMEN AND BRAVO SHE LIVES TO HATE 13:09  |  Petra 18/10/07
  52.   Hitler Would Laugh His Head Off 13:15  |  Ben Israel 18/10/07
  53.   The Piano Has Been Drinking Tom Waits 13:16  |  Petra 18/10/07
  54.   sh #49 shhhhhhh, listen to the music 17:13  |  FOX 18/10/07
  55.   Hannah: Barernboim is not a zionist 22:01  |  Ruben 18/10/07
  56.   IRAN 23:17  |  ron 18/10/07
  57.   To Cynthia Bixby, MD 23:22  |  Morris Valentine 18/10/07
  58.   that`s not "turning", its summersaults he`s doing 23:28  |  david 18/10/07
  59.   Wagner - Hitler 23:38  |  J Herrmann 18/10/07
  60.   wrong emphasis 18:48  |  Stephen Cera 19/10/07
  61.   To Stephen Cera 23:13  |  Morris Valentine 19/10/07
  62.   Oy, Barenboim, why have you foresaken us? 21:48  |  Nechama 22/10/07
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