Nabucco in Zion: Place, Metaphor and Nationalism in an Israeli Production of Verdi’s Opera

Abstract

This article investigates the performance and reception of an Israeli opera production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Nabucco in 2010, staged at the World Heritage site of Masada in the Judaean Desert in Israel. The article examines the ways in which the Italian political and national mythology attached to this work was simultaneously implemented and displaced in order to allow an Israeli nationalist interpretation of the opera. The significance of Masada to Israeli collective memory and national identity, and the way in which this interacted with the mythology surrounding Nabucco, are also explored.