Israellycool

Introducing Gadafy: the Opera.

Can an opera about the Libyan dictator Muammar Gadafy really be a good idea? There are precedents: in John Adams’ Nixon in China, for instance, Mao duets with the American president. Evita’s husband was a despot. Hitler is name-checked in Mel Brooks’s The Producers. And let’s not forget Trey Parker’s film Team America: World Police, in which a puppet North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Il, sings a torch song about how lonely it is at the top - which it probably is.

 

But until now, no one has risked making an opera that puts a dictator centre stage, still less while he is alive. This autumn, the Asian Dub Foundation will remedy that with Gaddafi: the Opera, co-written with the playwright Shan Khan, and currently in rehearsal.

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The opera starts with Gadafy’s coup d’Ètat in 1969, when he was 28 years old, and follows his career right through to March 2004, when Tony Blair visited his tent for tea, thereby endorsing a man reviled by the west for more than three decades. But will it include topical showstoppers along the lines of “I’m gonna wash Saddam right outta my hair”, or “Nasser, he’s my baby. No sir, don’t mean maybe”?

 

Probably not - not least because all the music will be original. ADF’s Steve Chandra Savale (nicknamed Chandrasonic, because he used to tune all the strings of his guitar to one note and then play the instrument with a knife) is guarded about the details. He says the opera will deal with all the controversies surrounding the Libyan leader, including the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher during a demonstration outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984, Ronald Reagan’s bombing of Tripoli in 1986, the Lockerbie disaster of 1988, and Libya’s bankrolling of the IRA.

 

“I thought it would be interesting to do an anti-musical,” Savale explains. “Most musicals are just glorified karaoke or too nice, too mainstream. This will be anything but mainstream. It’s about a modern political myth. Gadafy’s like Ziggy Stardust in reverse.” How so? “Instead of a messianic pop star, you have this captivating man who took a great deal, in terms of his cult of personality, from Nasser [the west-defying Egyptian president]. He was and is an immensely seductive person, who isn’t really a fundamentalist, conservative or a socialist but is taken for all those things.

 

“And the story has everything - oil, terrorism, women bodyguards. [Gadafy] draws on his own Bedouin heritage as well as Marx, Rousseau and the Koran to create an idealistic revolution. Did you know,” Savale asks, peering earnestly through his straying locks, “that there is a day of revenge in Libya for the attempted genocide by the Italians?” I didn’t. After the interview, though, I find out that last year, to mark the 94th anniversary of Italy’s invasion, anyone trying to dial into the country heard a recorded message saying: “International communications are interrupted until 6pm to denounce the odious crimes committed by the Italians against the Libyan people.”

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Savale says ADF’s opera will be serious in tone, up until the final scene: Blair’s visit. “That will be shot through with satire, just because it was such a weird moment. He was the demon and suddenly he’s our friend.”

He made 13 people disappear into thin air during his Kravis Center show Sunday night, but magician David Copperfield couldn’t duplicate the feat with armed teens who robbed him and two women near the venue two hours later.

 

No one was injured in the incident.

 

The handgun-toting suspects scrammed in a black Malibu with a Kentucky license plate but were nabbed 10 minutes later by West Palm Beach cops.

 

Behind bars today are three Palm Beach Shores boys, all 17, whose names weren’t released because of their age, and 18-year-old Dwayne Riley, known on the streets as The Kentuckian. They were charged with armed robbery and held without bail.

 

The tattoo-covered Riley, also from Palm Beach Shores, is alleged to have pointed a gun at Copperfield, 49, whose real name is David Kotkin.

 

“I had a gun pointed at my head from 6 inches away,” Copperfield said Tuesday between his two shows in Sunrise. “I’m pretty good under pressure. That’s my job. But I had two young ladies with me.”

 

The illusionist and assistants Cathy Daly and Mia Volmut were walking near CityPlace toward their tour bus parked at the Kravis when thugs approached them about 11:15 p.m. The group had gone to a steakhouse for dinner after Copperfield’s sixth and last show here.

 

According to the police report, this is what happened next: The Malibu pulled up behind the group, and two of the four young men in the car came out holding handguns. One ordered Daly to “give me what you have.” Daly handed over $400 from her pockets. Riley, meanwhile, allegedly stuck a gun in Volmut’s face and asked for her purse, and she, too, gave it up. In it were 200 euros, $100, her passport, plane tickets and a Razor cellphone.

 

When Copperfield’s turn came, Riley was bamboozled.

 

Copperfield told Page Two he pulled out all of his pockets for Riley to see he had nothing, even though he had a cellphone, passport and wallet stuffed in them.

 

“Call it reverse pickpocketing,” Copperfield said.

Look’s like our favorite police squad has been watching too many Shaft movies.

And speaking of Shaft, it looks like one of these policemen has a bit of a complex about his “size.” Can you guess which one it is?

Movie star Andy Garcia’s controversial new movie The Lost City has been banned in parts of South America because it depicts romantic revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara in a terrible light. The Ocean’s Twelve star spent years trying to get the project made, only for film festival bosses and cinema chains to shun the movie because it tells the truth about the Marxist guerilla leader and the Cubans slayed as he fought to revolutionize the country and hand Fidel Castro leadership. Garcia, who wrote, directed and stars in the film, says, “There have been festivals that wouldn’t show it. That will continue to happen from people who don’t want to see the image of Che be tarnished and from people who support the Castro regime. He still has a lot of supporters out there. Some people think Castro is a savior, that he looks out for the kids and the poor. It’s a bunch of hogwash. In the 45 years since Castro came to power, Cuba has been in the top three countries for human rights abuses for 43 of those years. People turn a blind eye to his atrocities.”

Mahmoud Abbas does his roaring tiger impersonation.

“The lesson of World War II is that appeasement, concessions, and weakness are a recipe for a holocaust”

- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, at the official Holocaust Day ceremony

At least 22 people have been killed, and over 150 wounded, after three explosions rocked the Egyptian resort town of Dahab, located in Sinai.

Updates

9.50PM: Israel’s Channel 10 has reported that the Government know of the presence of Israelis in Dahab (most of whom are Israeli Arabs), but have no word of any Israeli casualties.

10.00PM: 3 Israelis have called the Israeli Foreign Ministry to say they are ok.

10.05PM: Ynet reports:

..the Magen David Adom ambulance service offered assistance to Egypt and is preparing to airlift rescue teams to Sinai. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz also instructed officials to offer Israeli aid and ordered the IDF to prepare for extending any assistance required by the Egyptians.

10.07PM: Israeli television reported that most of the tourists in the area were Europeans.

10.20PM: The casualty figures are now 30 dead, 160 wounded.

Palestinian medics tend to the body of an alleged Palestinian militant killed by an undercover Israeli army unit during an operation in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Sunday, April 23, 2006. Israeli undercover soldiers killed one Palestinian militant and arrested two others, Palestinian sources said. According to Palestinian sources the undercover unit ambushed the vehicle in the center of the town. The Israeli military was yet to make comment. (AP Photo/Magnus Johansson-MaanImages)

The “Skywalker” look with optional balaclava