@ajgoldmann

Film, Music, Opera, Art & Theater Critic + European Cultural Correspondent @nytimes, @wsj, @ft, @jdforward, @vanmusicmag https://xitter.cf/t.co/LoDyDYRZOD

 Munich / Berlin / New York
nytimes.com/by/a-j--goldmann
Joined August 2009
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It was a great honor to write the @nytimes obit for Alexander Kluge, a brilliant & influential artist & thinker whose work is too little known in the English-speaking world. Alexander Kluge, Lodestar in New German Cinema Movement, Dies at 94 nytimes.com/2026/03/27/movie… via @NYTimes

Alexander Kluge, 94, Revolutionary Filmmaker in Postwar Germany, Dies

As a director, theorist and prolific author, he was one of his country’s towering artists and public intellectuals.

nytimes.com
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Not my 9 favorite books, but this list gives a pretty good sense of my reading tastes.
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Mothers of Kherson @Opera_Narodowa recalls earlier operatic responses prompted by the war in #Ukraine, including @bay_staatsoper's 2023 production of Prokofiev’s War & Peace, which Dmitri Tcherniakov & Vladimir Jurowski read against the grain as a protest of violence & pageantry
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As well as Simon McBurney’s grim and mournful Khovanshchina at the 2025 #SalzburgEasterFestival, also a @MetOpera co-production, which examined Russian history through the prism of its bloody & repressive present. I reviewed "Mothers of Kherson" for @WSJ: wsj.com/arts-culture/theater…

‘The Mothers of Kherson’ Review: A Ukraine War Opera

A startlingly of-the-moment work about Russia’s abduction of children during the war in Ukraine, co-commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, had its premiere in Warsaw last week.

wsj.com
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I just discovered that a ponderous line in @benshapiro's "Confession" that's attributed to Pushkin - "Better the illusions that exalt us than 10,000 truths" - comes VERBATIM from an episode of the 90s sci-fi TV show Babylon 5. You can't make this sh*t up! ajgoldmann.substack.com/p/be…
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Why James Franco thought playing a Dostoevsky-quoting Soviet interrogator in Ben Shapiro’s Stalin-era thriller was a good way to make a post-#MeToo comeback is bewildering. The pain of watching “Confession” is only mitigated by its unintentional hilarity. ajgoldmann.substack.com/p/be…
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What does it means to make art about calamity in the midst of catastrophe? Few musical monuments to wartime horrors were written during the events they depict. @WSJ my take on Maxim Kolomiiets’s “Mothers of Kherson” @Opera_Narodowa, a @MetOper coproduction wsj.com/arts-culture/theater…

‘The Mothers of Kherson’ Review: A Ukraine War Opera

A startlingly of-the-moment work about Russia’s abduction of children during the war in Ukraine, co-commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, had its premiere in Warsaw last week.

wsj.com
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No surprise here, but @benshapiro's Stalin-era interrogation drama "Confession" is grim, ghastly & pompous. It's a bizarre comeback vehicle for James Franco - & bizarro that Nick Nolte & Jennifer Jason Leigh are in this. My review, now up at The Feuilleton substack.com/home/post/p-221…
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A week out from @deutsche_oper's new DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER a teaser just dropped w/some puzzling visuals & text: When Milo Rau takes on Wagner Major questions are posed The eternal search for redemption From Wagner to German guilt Wagner in Israel? ...the ghosts of the past...
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When I found this at my neighborhood Oxfam last week for €2.50, I should have known it was a sign…
Warner Bros. Clockwork
@clockwork_wbOct 6
From Ken Russell’s script to Oliver Reed’s performance: a side-by-side comparison with continuity supervisor Ann Skinner’s original script. KEN RUSSELL’S THE DEVILS opens in theaters 10.16 for one week only: thedevils.movie
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I had no idea Gaspar Noé made fan trailers in his spare time. (All joking aside, I’m very excited for this!)
Warner Bros. Clockwork
@clockwork_wbAug 13
Behold the Holy Grail. KEN RUSSELL’S THE DEVILS opens in theaters October 16 for an exclusive one-week engagement.

KEN RUSSELL'S THE DEVILS - Official Trailer - In Theaters October 16

The Director's Cut. Restored. Remastered.

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For @forward, I wrote about the widespread campaign, amplified by German media, to discredit the far-left Die Linke, which triumphed in last month's Berlin elections. The charge being leveled against the party: rank & systemic anisemitism @dielinkeberlin forward.com/opinion/853877/d…

What do Germans talk about when they talk about antisemitism?

After the leftist party Die Linke triumphed in Berlin, antisemitism became the headline — but it wasn't the whole story.

forward.com
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Yesterday, 5 naked women wearing harnesses scrubbed the facade of @Volksbuehne in Florentina Holzinger’s opening Aktion for the rededication /reconsecration of the legendary East Berlin theater, which looks to its new artistic director, Matthias Lilienthal, for artistic renewal.
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Some scenes from the opening
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One of the best all-time trade publication headlines. @Variety
Variety
@VarietySep 30
'NAZA' Beats 'Avengers: Endgame Encore' to Top Italian Box Office variety.com/2026/film/global…

‘NAZA’ Beats ‘Avengers: Endgame Encore’ to Top Italian Box Office

'NAZA,' the doc exploring the Gaza conflict through revelatory interviews with IDF soldiers, has bested 'Avengers: Endgame' to top Italy's box office.

variety.com
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So glad to see this shout-out to Carl Schorske & his fascinating analysis of Theodor Herzl & antiliberal political movements in fin-de-siècle Vienna, in Michael S. Roth's @nytimes withering review of Ben Moser's "Anti-Zionism." nytimes.com/2026/09/22/books…

This History of Anti-Zionism Paints a Fraught World in Black and White

In a new book, the prizewinning biographer Benjamin Moser charts a tradition of Jewish opposition to Zionism and recounts his belated conversion to that view.

nytimes.com
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A.J. Goldmann retweeted
Magills
@magills_Sep 24
An unmasked lesbian walks into a bar. Bartender asks “why the long COVID?”
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A milestone @deutsche_oper: the DE premiere of Mittwoch aus LICHT, the final opera in Maxime Pascal’s full Stockhausen cycle. An incisive & holistic performance @Le_Balcon, the DOB chorus & string quartet (aloft), illustrated by Susanne Kennedy & Markus Selg’s slop-heavy staging.
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Here’s my @nytimes feature about Pascal’s nearly decade-long bid to conduct the entire 30+ hour septology. He still hopes to someday present the fully-staged cycle - dirs. Lazar, Bigourdan, Huffman, Costa, Kennedy). nytimes.com/2025/11/14/arts/…

With a New ‘Montag,’ Stockhausen’s ‘Licht’ Cycle Nears Completion in Paris (Gift Article)

For one night only at the Philharmonie de Paris, Maxime Pascale will conduct “Montag aus Licht,” part of his bid to stage a septology long deemed unperformable.

nytimes.com
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NAZA deserves to be seen & debated with considerably more patience than its detractors have displayed. Its account of the procedures that govern civilian deaths in Gaza is devastating precisely because it sounds like people describing an ordinary workday. forward.com/opinion/850022/n…

Israel's culture minister called this documentary about IDF tactics 'vile.' It deserves to be seen.

'Naza,' which won a Special Jury Prize and a standing ovation in Venice, is a depressing and infuriating film

forward.com
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"Where [Ben] Moser wants to replace a largely comforting story with an entirely damning one, [Omer] Bartov refuses exculpation while remaining attentive to contingency."
Isaac Chotiner@IChotinerSep 14
I reviewed Benjamin Moser’s ‘Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History,’ and Omer Bartov’s ‘Israel: What Went Wrong?’ for this week’s issue of The New Yorker. newyorker.com/magazine/2026/…

Is Zionism’s Moral Crisis About Roads Not Taken—or Original Sin?

Where Benjamin Moser replaces one story of Jewish exceptionalism with another, Omer Bartov shows what’s lost when polemic takes the place of history.

newyorker.com
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