The State of Terror

Re-producingKlinghoffer:Opera and Arab Identity before and after 9/11

“…Certainly, the Achille Lauro hijacking was one of these events that figured prominently in U.S. culture, represented as it is in numerous works in addition to the opera: two television movies (1989 and 1990), a tell-all memoir by the ship's captain Gerardi de Rosa (1987), analytical texts such as Antonio Cassese's Terrorism, Politics and Law: The Achille Lauro Affair (1989) and Annamarie Oliverio's The State of Terror (1998), and a variety of broadcast and print news media. Moreover, if, as Oliverio argues, the hijacking's many representations serve as “strategies” designed to produce values and icons—heroes, victims, and villains—in relation to the concept of terrorism, I would suggest, too, that the opera's several productions are part of that ongoing work 9 .…”