Desmond Tutu was an outspoken critic of apartheid and was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1984 South Africa’s Cape Town Opera has turned down an appeal from Nobel peace prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu to call off a tour of Israel.
He said it would be as inappropriate as it had been for international firms to visit South Africa during apartheid.
But Cape Town Opera’s managing director said the company was reluctant to take the political stand of shunning cultural ties with Israel.
It hopes to negotiate a later tour which might include Palestinian venues.
“Our artists act as ambassadors and exemplars of the free society that has been achieved in democratic South Africa”
Michael Williams Cape Town OperaTutu in his own words
The opera’s production of Porgy and Bess will be performed in Tel Aviv next month.
In his letter the archbishop, who retired from public life earlier this month, said it would be wrong for the Cape Town singers to perform “in a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity”.
He said the tour should be postponed “until both Israeli and Palestinian opera lovers of the region have equal opportunity and unfettered access to attend performances”.
“Only the thickest-skinned South Africans would be comfortable performing before an audience that excluded residents living, for example, in an occupied West Bank village 30 minutes from Tel Aviv.
“To perform Porgy and Bess, with its universal message of non-discrimination, in the present state of Israel, is unconscionable.”
But Cape Town Opera’s managing director said she believed in the “transformative power of the arts”.
“I am proud that our artists, when travelling abroad, act as ambassadors and exemplars of the free society that has been achieved in democratic South Africa,” Michael Williams said in a statement.
She added that their production of the Gershwin opera has “much which should provide food for thought for audiences in Israel”.
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