TT: They don’t do Wagner

David Stern, the Israeli Opera‘s new music director, announced the other day that he won’t be programming the operas of Richard Wagner in Tel Aviv. The resulting news story may have come as a surprise to American readers who are unaware that Wagner’s music is not played in Israel’s opera houses or concert halls. This informal ban, which has been in force since the founding in 1948 of the state of Israel, is the subject of my “Sightings” column in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. (It was originally scheduled to run two weeks ago but was replaced by a column about Andrew Wyeth.)
The ban, needless to say, was and is a response to Wagner’s anti-Semitism. Is it still justified? Was it ever? Pick up a copy of tomorrow’s Journal to see what I have to say.
You might also want to take a look at Alex Ross’ The Unforgiven: Wagner and Hitler, originally published in The New Yorker in 1998, which is very much worth reading in this connection.
UPDATE: Read the whole thing here.