Earlier this week, Tamara Bernstein, a critic for Toronto's National
Post (and sometime andante contributor), blasted Atom Egoyan for his production of Richard Strauss'
Salome at the Canadian Opera Company, calling it it "offensive" and
accusing the director of "pumping up the opera's anti-Semitic elements." Egoyan, Canada's most acclaimed filmmaker and an 1998 Oscar nominee, fired back, writing an article for today's National Post defending his interpretation and demanding an
apology.
Bernstein had suggested, in her January 21 review, that Strauss' opera is itself "nasty" enough that it should be "mothballed." Egoyan, she wrote, adds an incestuous gang rape sequence perpetrated by Herod and a group of Jews — a scene "at odds with Strauss' music" — and a number of Jewish stereotypes, turning the Jews into drug-dealing doctors and converting Salome into a "spoiled Jewish American Princess."
In his response, Egoyan wrote that, while he usually doesn't respond to reviews, Bernstein's "inflammatory" comments didn't allow him to hold his tongue. He attributed many of his directorial choices to a desire to "give psychological justification to Salome's horrific behavior" — demanding the head of John the Baptist — in the Bible story. His solution was "to elaborate the story of incest" already present in Strauss' opera. "I'm appalled by the suggestion that my desire to explore the dramatic possibilities of this important work has labelled me anti-Semitic," he concluded. "Ms. Bernstein's comments border on the libellous, and I expect an apology."
Bernstein, according to the paper, will respond to Egoyan's article in tomorrow's National Post.
"A night of violation — on both a musical and a personal
level"
Tamara Bernstein - National Post - 21 January
2002
"Don't let Salome be misunderstood"
Atom Egoyan -
National Post - 24 January 2002
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