Celebrated for the psychosexual crosscurrents of Call Me By Your Name, the filmmaker Luca Guadagnino makes his debut at the venerable Maggio Musicale Fiorentino festival as director and designer of The Death of Klinghoffer. The composer John Adams and the librettist Alice Goodman’s encore after the easy-to-love graphic-novel-in-music Nixon in China, this latter-day Passion play dramatizes the hijacking of the Achille Lauro, an Italian cruise ship, by members of the Palestinian Liberation Front and the murder of the elderly American-Jewish tourist they threw overboard in his wheelchair.“An immense work,” Guadagnino has called it, noting how it probes the mythic roots of contemporary horrors. Daniel Okulitch sings the central role of the Captain, a man of conscience cast into powerlessness. Joshua Bloom appears as Rambo, leader of the pirate crew. Janetka Moşco provides a flash of giddy cluelessness as the vacationing British Dancing Girl. The victim Leon Klinghoffer’s surprisingly brief role falls to the veteran Laurent Naouri, with Susan Bullock as Marilyn Klinghoffer, his wife, the most eloquent player in this mournfully even-handed yet incendiarymasterpiece, which has scandalized (and continues to scandalize) Jewish and Palestinian sensibilities alike. Such, indeed, was the outcry at the time of the premiere that the composer seriously considered never venturing into opera again.Performances remain rare and are often plagued by protests. According to The Guardian, people told Guadagnino he was out of his mind to take it on. In view especially of current headlines, they may be right in their pusillanimous way. Gaudagnino’s the brave soul this material deserves. —Matthew Gurewitsch