Israel will honor Barenboim

Conductor Daniel Barenboim will receive Israel’s prestigious Wolf Prize after saying he regretted any harm caused by his performance in Israel of music by Richard Wagner, Hitler’s favorite composer.

While Barenboim maintained he had no regrets about leading the Berlin Staatskapelle Orchestra in a performance of music from Wagner’s opera “Tristan und Isolde” at the Israel Festival in 2001, the conductor said in an interview earlier this week with Israel Radio: “If people were really hurt, of course I regret this, because I don’t want to harm anyone.”

That seemed to satisfy Israeli Education Minister Limor Livnat, who’d demanded that Barenboim apologize for defying Israel’s unwritten ban on Wagner. Meanwhile, Barenboim, director of Berlin Staatsoper, has threatened to quit that company if a reorganization of Berlin’s three opera companies goes through.