JEWISH PRESS
by Lori Lowenthal Marcus
October 6, 2014

Leonard Weiss is a New York businessman who loves opera and has been a patron of the Metropolitan Opera for years. Weiss has attended many of the Met’s opening night galas, and has been on every Met patron’s summer trip to attend performances at European opera houses. Weiss has had the same parterre box at the Met for over 25 years, and has participated in many Metropolitan Opera events. But all that is a thing of the past.

According to a letter Weiss sent to Ann Ziff, this year’s Metropolitan Opera Gala Chairman, Weiss is finished being a patron of the Met. That is because Peter Gelb, the Met’s managing director, chose to put on the falsely named “Death of Klinghoffer” opera.

All of Weiss’s active support for the Met “has come to a screeching halt due to the contemptible behavior of Peter Gelb. He has to be deaf, dumb and blind to insist that the opera written by a composer who has a belligerent attitude toward Israel and the Jews, and an outright anti-Semite, Alice Goodman, an apostate, to say that he sees no sign of anything that is anti-Israel or pro-terrorism in the opera,” Weiss wrote in his letter to Ziff, dated Sept. 22……Weiss then turns from criticism to a description of the action he has taken in response to what he criticized. Weiss informed the Met that he used the money he had planned to donate to the Met this year for something else. I personally was responsible for funding the demonstration on opening night……

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