A reader in Victoria alerted me to this latest sick anti-Israel eruption, as the Victoria Philharmonic Choir performs a new version of Handel’s Samson—in which Samson is a suicide bomber who blows up the King David Hotel in 1946 Jerusalem.

The change is the idea of artistic director Simon Capet, who told CBC Radio he wants to “get people talking about music.”

The oratorio has the familiar music written in 1741 by George Frideric Handel with the same words, but the time and setting have been changed.

Capet said he grew up in IRA-era Britain and lost college acquaintances on Pan Am 103, which was bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. He said he was struck by the pervasiveness of these violent acts throughout history. “Why do we repeat the same mistakes over again?” he wondered.

Samson is an examination of a political and personal struggle, but updated to make it more relevant to modern audiences by drawing parallels with ongoing conflict in the Middle East, he said.

“Samson could be any ‘freedom fighter’,” Capet said. …

Capet has moved the story to 1946 Palestine, when ultra-Zionist bombers were battling the British on land that would later become Israel.

In this version, Samson doesn’t pull down a temple, but does bomb the King David Hotel, an actual attack by militant Zionists that took place in 1946.

Here’s the web site of the Victoria Philharmonic Choir.

The Samson Story

The production features popular tenor Ken Lavigne as Samson; Toronto-based baritone Bruce Kelly as Samson’s father, Manoah; soprano Nancy Washeim as Dalila; mezzo Michelle McKenzie as mother Micah; and baritone Stephen Barradell as Samson’s philistine rival Harapha. And of course, as always, the wonderful voices of the 80-strong VPC and members of the Victoria Symphony, all under the exciting direction of conductor Simon Capet.

Samson, begun just two weeks after the great baroque composer finished the Messiah, has been called one of Handel’s most fully-realized oratorios. Based on Milton’s version of the famous Biblical tale, Samon Agonistes, it features glorious melodies, dramatic arias and stirring choruses. The oratorio opens when Isrealite Samson has already been betrayed by the seductress Dalila who has shorn him of his hair and thus taken his strength. He has been captured by the Philistines, blinded and tortured. In revenge, as 3,000 Philistines feast and celebrate, he brings down the pillars of a temple, killing himself and everyone inside. In a sense, he was the Middle East’s first suicide terrorist in a region beset by war and strife for more than 3,000 years.