‘They said: You’re out of your mind’: Luca Guadagnino on directing controversial opera The Death of Klinghoffer

The opera – about the hijacking of a cruise by the PLF who murder a Jewish American wheelchair user – has been subject to protests and accused of romanticising terrorism. Why was the film-maker so desperate to stage it? In a rehearsal room perched above the labyrinthine backstage of Florence’s starkly contemporary Maggio Musicale Fiorentino theatre, Luca Guadagnino is showing the women of the chorus how to make a second-act entrance. Dressed in a slouchy cardigan and slacks, the Italian direc...

By Ben Miller