British Opera Company Cancels ‘Tosca' Collaboration in Israel After Criticism
'We have made the decision that our new production of 'Tosca' will not be going to Israel,' Alex Beard, the Royal Ballet and Opera's chief executive, told the staff.
A spokeswoman for the Royal Ballet and Opera said on Tuesday that the Israeli Opera had approached it last year about staging 'Tosca' in a new production by the London company's director of opera, Oliver Mears.
Mears's 'Tosca' will premiere in London in September, and the companies had not signed any contracts, the spokeswoman said.
But as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza — where more people have been dying of malnutrition — has worsened since Israel restricted aid following the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, the company's attitude to the collaboration seems to have changed. More than 60,000 Gazans have been killed since Israel began retaliating for the attacks , according to Gaza health officials. About 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed by Palestinian assailants in the 2023 attacks, and about 250 others were taken hostage.
The scale of the devastation in Gaza and the mounting global outcry over the Israeli government's actions have pushed Britain and other European countries to be more vocal in their condemnation of Israel in recent weeks.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
24 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
‘Vulture' is a provocative satire about a clueless scoop seeker in Gaza
'Doctor Strangelove,' 'Catch-22,' and 'M*A*S*H' collide in British journalist Phoebe Greenwood's blistering debut novel, 'Vulture,' a darkly comic, searing satire grounded in historic politics, suffused with incipient journalism and imbued with self-aggrandizement. Dominoes fall quickly and hard for 33-year-old budding reporter Sara Byrne, assigned as a freelance stringer by the fictional London Tribune to cover the 2012 Gaza War. She is ambitious and clueless. A nepo baby, she's certain a scoop will make her career and bring her out of the shadow of her recently deceased father, Bill, a foreign affairs writer considered a titan among the giants of Fleet Street. She finds herself ensconced in all-expenses-paid headquarters for foreign correspondents like her: the Beach, Gaza's four-star 'nice hotel,' an 'oasis of humanity in a blighted desert' featuring a room with uninterrupted sea views and shrimps in a clay pot. Observing the consequences of conflict, Sara soon realizes she is embedded in her own emotional war zone. The Beach is a convenient location for mingling, networking and seeking contacts through a fixer, someone essential for foreign correspondents. Sara's fixer is Nasser. He introduces her to an aged, grieving Palestinian widower who has lost his whole family in a bombing, but she doesn't see any point in even being in Gaza if the only story 'was sad Mohammeds talking about their dead kids and dead wives and neighbors and so forth.' She dismisses ongoing attacks, thinking everything is 'getting a bit samey.' A morgue visit elicits disinterest and little more than a body count, with Sara wondering if 'ten makes a massacre. I only counted six.' In a crowd of dead, limp bodies, she spots a sobbing Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist and exclaims, 'What good is a crying photographer to anyone?' Heartless, she wants a bigger story, something that would put her byline on the front page. If Nasser can't get her into Hamas' underground tunnels 'where all the men running the war were hiding with their rockets,' then she would have to find someone who could. That someone appears to be Fadi, part of the fixer culture. He wore 'skin-tight black jeans and a black t-shirt with I Heart Brooklyn written on it in red, loopy letters' and 'stank of aftershave that could easily have been his sister's perfume and smoked cigarettes greedily.' His alluring credentials include an uncle he claims is a top fighter in the resistance who can get Sara a meet and greet with the leader of the Al-Yasser Front. Fadi promises a photo shoot with black balaclavas, guns and black flags. Foolhardily, defying Nasser's caution, Sara offers Fadi $1,000 for an excursion into the 'terror tunnels,' certain this will give her a proper story to write rather than what she terms 'monkey journalism.' Instead, after several delays and setbacks, she finds herself involved in an excruciatingly senseless death when the Beach's restaurant is bombed. Greenwood's graphic details are vivid and disturbing, from screaming that is 'a high unnatural wail that could shrivel souls like salted slugs' to air 'powdered with concrete and sulfur.' With dead bodies scattered around her, Sara, her hands dripping a trail of blood, retreats to her room, feeling responsible for one particularly shocking death. A series of flashbacks sprinkled throughout the novel highlight the deep psychological wounds Sara brings to her wartime experience. They underscore the guilt she carries from traumatic relationships with her father, mother and an adulterous affair. She believes she can never match her father's success as a reporter and on the first anniversary of his death, instead of visiting his grave, her mother takes her to a Sloane Square department store (because that's where she was taken as a child to buy shoes). Her clandestine involvement with her father's close friend and literary agent, whose wife is dying of cancer, implodes, leaving her a bitter 'other woman' living her own soap opera. It complicates a sexual encounter with an Italian cohort in Gaza. One of those flashback chapters, 'The Cradle of Civilization,' unravels the ironic, ravaging narcissistic, perhaps psychopathic implications of the title. Like the bird of prey seeking carrion, a foreign correspondent is characterized as a misery merchant or conflict cowboy, making a living from death and disaster. Even as their function is to give voice to the voiceless, Greenwood writes, their assignment is to 'stand in the middle of something,' to understand (from the Old English, understanden) and listen. As they do so, like Sara, seeking a 'defining moment' they might morph into news cannibals. And then there are the other birds. They are scattered throughout the novel. Keep an eye on them. Sara does. The literal ones and the magical, metaphorical ones. The first sighting is a simple one, easily dismissed. A manky bird on her balcony jolts Sara from semi-wakefulness right after she's had a dream of her dying father. Its habitual appearance becomes disconcerting. Is it just a bird or is it a harbinger of doom and death? She begins to think of it as a 'deranged stalker,' a 'horrifying, tapping shitting bird,' terrorizing her. Eventually, Sara, her health deteriorating from what appears as an undiagnosed illness, begins to hallucinate, seeing the bird's 'heart beating visibly under its feathered ribs, its metallic purple face,' culminating in believing the bird has transmogrified into a talking pigeon that is her father. Greenwood's stinging, salient novel remains relevant (the more things change, the more they stay the same), excoriating those who make a business of war whether it's public or personal. As the owner of the Beach observes: 'War may be hell but it's one hell of an employer.' 'Vulture' is a provocative, uncompromising powerhouse of a read. Papinchak, a former university English professor, is an award-winning book critic in the Los Angeles area.
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Yahoo
Britain's Royal Mail celebrates Monty Python with stamps featuring iconic sketches and characters
LONDON (AP) — And now for something completely different: Britain's Royal Mail has issued stamps celebrating the absurdist comedy of Monty Python. The 10-stamp series announced on Thursday celebrates some of the troupe's most iconic characters and catchphrases, from 'Nudge, nudge' to 'The Lumberjack Song.' Six stamps depict scenes from the sketch-comedy TV series 'Monty Python's Flying Circus,' including 'The Spanish Inquisition,' 'The Ministry of Silly Walks," 'Dead Parrot' and 'The Nude Organist.' Another four mark the 50th anniversary of the cult classic 1975 film 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail,' including one showing the limb-losing Black Knight insisting, ''Tis but a scratch.' The stamps can be pre-ordered from Thursday and go on sale Aug. 14. Made up of Michael Palin, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and Graham Chapman, Monty Python brought a unique blend of satire, surrealism and silliness to British TV screens in a series that ran from 1969 to 1974. The troupe also made several feature films, including 'And Now for Something Completely Different,' 'Monty Python's Life of Brian' and 'Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.' David Gold, Royal Mail's director of external affairs, said the collection 'honors a body of work that has shaped the comedic landscape for nearly six decades.' Palin said he was 'very glad to share a stamp with the nude organist!' The group largely disbanded in the 1980s, and Chapman died of cancer in 1989. The five surviving Pythons reunited in 2014 for a string of live stage shows. Jones died in 2020 from a rare form of dementia. The Associated Press Errore nel recupero dei dati Effettua l'accesso per consultare il tuo portafoglio Errore nel recupero dei dati Errore nel recupero dei dati Errore nel recupero dei dati Errore nel recupero dei dati
Washington Post
11 hours ago
- Washington Post
Britain's Royal Mail celebrates Monty Python with stamps featuring iconic sketches and characters
LONDON — And now for something completely different: Britain's Royal Mail has issued stamps celebrating the absurdist comedy of Monty Python . The 10-stamp series announced on Thursday celebrates some of the troupe's most iconic characters and catchphrases, from 'Nudge, nudge' to 'The Lumberjack Song.' Six stamps depict scenes from the sketch-comedy TV series 'Monty Python's Flying Circus,' including 'The Spanish Inquisition,' 'The Ministry of Silly Walks,' 'Dead Parrot' and 'The Nude Organist.' Another four mark the 50th anniversary of the cult classic 1975 film 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail,' including one showing the limb-losing Black Knight insisting, ''Tis but a scratch.' The stamps can be pre-ordered from Thursday and go on sale Aug. 14. Made up of Michael Palin, John Cleese, Eric Idle , Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and Graham Chapman, Monty Python brought a unique blend of satire, surrealism and silliness to British TV screens in a series that ran from 1969 to 1974. The troupe also made several feature films, including 'And Now for Something Completely Different,' 'Monty Python's Life of Brian' and 'Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.' David Gold, Royal Mail's director of external affairs, said the collection 'honors a body of work that has shaped the comedic landscape for nearly six decades.' Palin said he was 'very glad to share a stamp with the nude organist!' The group largely disbanded in the 1980s, and Chapman died of cancer in 1989. The five surviving Pythons reunited in 2014 for a string of live stage shows. Jones died in 2020 from a rare form of dementia.
