At the Metropolitan Opera’s first performance of John Adams’s “The Death of Klinghoffer” on Monday night, men and women in evening attire walked through a maze of police barricades, while protesters shouted “Shame!” and “Terror is not art!” One demonstrator held aloft a white handkerchief splattered with red. Others, in wheelchairs set up for the occasion, lined Columbus Avenue.
Political figures, including former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, joined a rally, several hundred strong at Lincoln Center, to denounce an opera that has become the object of a charged debate about art, anti-Semitism and politics.
But after months of escalating protests, including threats of opera officials and online harassment of the cast, “Klinghoffer” finally went on, only a few minutes late. There were cheers when David Robertson, the conductor, arrived in the pit and a few boos after the opening “Chorus of Exiled Palestinians” ended.
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James' World 2 
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