The Death of Klinghoffer is an American opera, with music by John Adams to an English-language libretto by Alice Goodman. First produced in Brussels and New York in 1991, the opera is based on the hijacking of the passenger liner Achille Lauro by the Palestine Liberation Front in 1985, and the hijackers' murder of a 69-year-old Jewish-American wheelchair-using passenger, Leon Klinghoffer. The concept of the opera originated with theatre director Peter Sellars, who was a major collaborator, as was choreographer Mark Morris. It was commissioned by five American and European opera companies, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The opera has generated controversy, including allegations by Klinghoffer's two daughters and others that the opera is antisemitic and glorifies terrorism. The work's creators and others have disputed these criticisms. Performance history Theatre director Peter Sellars developed the concept of this opera and was a major collaborator, as was choreographer Mark Morris. The opera was originally commissioned through a consortium of six entities: the Brussels opera company La Monnaie, the San Francisco Opera, the Opéra de Lyon in France, the Los Angeles Festival (separate from that city's opera company), the Glyndebourne Festival in England, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The first performance took place at the Théatre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels, Belgium, on March 19, 1991, directed by Sellars. The next month, the Lyon premiere took place. This was followed by a Nonesuch studio recording in that French city with the same cast. The first US performance was at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on September 5, 1991. Controversy ensued. An opening scene depicting a suburban family, the Rumors, was permanently cut from the score on grounds that it caused offense due to anti-Semitic stereotypes. The Nonesuch recording, released in 1992, does not include this music. Because of the reaction to the subject matter and philosophy of the opera, planned stagings at Glyndebourne and in Los Angeles were cancelled. When the original production was staged by San Francisco Opera in November 1992, the Jewish Information League mounted protests. The first staging in Germany took place in 1997 in Nürnberg, followed by a second German production at the Opernhaus Wuppertal in 2005. Another European production was given in February 2001, in Helsinki at Finnish National Opera. The first complete UK performance was a 2002 concert in London by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Penny Woolcock directed a British television version of the