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FACTBOX-Israelis set to play at Wagner's own opera house

by Reuters
Tuesday, 5 October 2010 02:51 GMT

Oct 5 (Reuters) - The Israel Chamber Orchestra is set to become the first Israeli ensemble to play at the prestigious music festival in Bayreuth, home of German composer Richard Wagner.

Here are some details about the controversy in Israel surrounding Wagner's music:

* BACKGROUND:

-- Israel has unofficially banned Wagner's music for decades. For many, especially Holocaust survivors, his works carry echoes of Nazi Germany's slaughter of six million Jews during World War Two.

-- Hitler's theories of racial purity and exterminating Jews were partly drawn from Wagner's anti-Semitic writings.

-- The ban on Wagner predates Israel's creation in 1948. The Israel Philharmonic under its former name, the Palestine Orchestra, imposed it in 1938 following Nazi attacks on Jews in Germany.

* INCIDENTS:

* In 2001 Zubin Mehta, conductor of the Israel Philharmonic for 30 years, condemned a call by Israeli lawmakers to ban performances by maestro Daniel Barenboim over a performance of a work by Richard Wagner.

-- Barenboim, an Argentinean-born Israeli, told his audience at the July 2001 concert he would play a piece from Wagner's opera "Tristan and Isolde" and said those who objected should leave. Several dozen, some shouting "Fascist" and "Go home", slammed doors as they walked out of the concert by the visiting Berlin Staatskapelle in Jerusalem.

* In 2000, Israel's Rishon Lezion orchestra broke the taboo against Wagner. The orchestra, conducted by Holocaust survivor Mendi Rodan, played Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll". * In 1998, Israel's Tel Aviv opera company shelved plans to perform a Wagner aria after dozens protested.

* In 1953 on a tour to Israel, revered violinist Jascha Heifetz was attacked by a man with an iron bar after playing a violin sonata by Richard Strauss, who had been head of the State Music Bureau for several years under the Third Reich.

-- Strauss's music is no longer unofficially banned in Israel and is performed regularly and heard on the airwaves.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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