Daniel Glaser is a D.C. policy guy. A lawyer, he came to the nation’s capital and worked at the Treasury Department, eventually rising to assistant secretary for terrorism financing and financial crimes; he worked in presidential administrations from Clinton to Bush to Obama.
Just months after 9/11, he put together the National Security Office at the Treasury Department; today he heads global services at the private firm K2 Integrity.
But Glaser is also an opera guy, which sometimes still surprises him. “I was a rock ‘n’ roll, punk rock kind of guy until my 40s,” he said. “I discovered opera, fell in love with it and I never looked back.” These days, as a board member of the Washington National Opera, he says he’s so passionate about the art that he wants everyone to discover opera, exclaiming “If they come, they’ll love it!”
As founder of the recently inaugurated U.S.-Israel Opera Initiative, Glaser hopes to forge a long-term collaborative relationship between the WNO and the Israeli Opera.
WNO General Director Timothy O’Leary called Israel’s national opera company “very well regarded,” noting long-time WNO artistic director Francesca Zambello has worked with the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv many times.
This new U.S.-Israel Opera Initiative grew from a September 2024 business trip Glaser took to Israel. He found himself at dinner in Tel Aviv with the artistic and general directors of the Israeli Opera.
Nine months later, on June 13, Israeli Opera General Manager Tali Barash Gottlieb and composer Yonatan Cnaan were leaving for the airport to join in the initiative’s inaugural concert at The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater.
Rather than a flight to Washington, D.C., Gottlieb found herself in a bomb shelter as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps rained missiles on Israel.
“I was literally at the door, ready to leave for the airport together with ‘Theodor’s’ composer Yonatan Cnaan and two of our singers, when the sirens sounded,” she wrote in a message shared by Glaser at the event.
The evening went on mostly as planned – even as Barash, Cnaan and two singers remained in Tel Aviv. The program’s centerpiece featured a screening of the Israeli Opera’s 2023 production of “Theodor.”
This new operatic work examines the early life and establishing events that inspired journalist Theodor Herzl to write his treatise “Der Judenstadt,” laying the groundwork for modern Zionism.
The recital featured Israeli Opera tenor Adi Ezra, who stated that he was on the last plane departing Israel before airspace over the Jewish nation closed.
Speaking to attendees at a preperformance reception in the Kennedy Center’s JFK Hall, he said, “It is an honor to be here but also pretty hard being away from my country [at this time]. I’ll sing an aria about how Herzl is lost. … He sings about home and how he wants to feel he belongs somewhere, but wonders which home to go to. That aria will be very personal to me tonight.”
Forging a Link to Collaborate
The June 15 inaugural program, jointly sponsored by the Washington and Israeli Operas and Washington Hebrew Congregation, was dedicated to the memory of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, the two Israeli Embassy staff members who were murdered outside the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum on May 21 in an act of antisemitism.
Glaser shared that Milgrim was an opera fan and, while growing up in Kansas, she sang with the KC Lyric Opera.
The program opened with the Israeli and U.S. national anthems, sung by Israeli Opera’s Ezra and Tiffany Cho, a Washington National Opera Cafritz Young Artist.
Composer Yonatan Cnaan’s opera “Theodor” was named one of the best operas of 2023, the year it premiered, by Opera Now magazine. With a libretto by Ido Ricklin, the modern Hebrew work tells the story of the birth of Zionism through the experiences and struggles of its founder Theodor Herzl.
“Herzl, like the greatest of artists, dared to push the boundaries of imagination. His dream of a future that did not yet exist was born of anguish and injustice,” wrote Israeli Opera’s Barash Gottlieb, “but it was shaped by the belief that humanity could be better and it was brought to life through his bold, proactive courage that defines those who dare to change the world.”
For the WNO’s O’Leary, who has not yet made it to Tel Aviv, a work like “Theodor” reflects the D.C. company’s interest in developing new works to attract new audiences to opera, with its aging audiences. “It’s about moving the art form forward,” O’Leary added. “We have that point of view as a … producing organization, and certainly the Israeli opera has it as well.”
In fact, Glaser hopes in coming years that the Israeli Opera will bring this work that explores the roots of founding the modern Israeli state to both The Kennedy Center and on a national tour.
Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, and even prior, Glaser said, “Israeli artists have in some parts of the world been shunned. That makes this collaboration even more important because it gives Israeli artists the opportunity to shine … because these are artists who deserve to have those opportunities. As an artistic endeavor [this is] supposed to rise above politics. Art brings people together. That’s what we are achieving.”
Beyond bringing the production “Theodor” to the United States, O’Leary hopes this international collaboration will lead to co-productions with the Israeli Opera.
He added, “There are certain programs that we’ve done in concert that are not hard to reproduce if the Israeli Opera is interested. There is also the possibility of collaborating on educational initiatives that could be used by both [companies]. An important part of our mission at the WNO is bridge building — an important element of the arts in general.”
This initiative does just that at a politically fragile moment in U.S.-Israeli relations.
A collaboration between two major opera organizations comes at a price. This initiative would not have been possible, Glaser noted, without the generous contribution of Antoun Sehnaoui, a Lebanese banker, businessman and film producer who presently serves as chair of SGBL Group.
Based in Monaco, Sehnaoui was not available for comment on his financial support of this program, but Glaser noted that Sehnaoui, a Lebanese Christian, has been an advocate of Zionism.
For both the WNO and the Israeli Opera, the U.S.-Israel Opera Initiative is a way to forge international relationships, which is paramount in the opera world. Equally important is reaching new audiences, both through new works and new initiatives like this one.
Yet, in this era of heightened anti-Zionism and antisemitism, when Israeli artists and artistic endeavors are picketed, boycotted and canceled at venues around the world — among them Batsheva Dance Company in New York earlier this year, singer Matisyahu in Boston and comic Yohay Sponder in Copenhagen — is O’Leary concerned about possible protests or boycotts of this program?
He demurred, stating: “Whenever you do artistic work … people have strong points of view politically and otherwise. Doing meaningful work is important for our mission at the WNO. Certainly at the Kennedy Center, we’re not strangers to people expressing their points of view, and … we know how to work with it. We are always prepared.”
At the opening event, that included nearly a dozen uniformed officers, magnetometers and plainclothes retired Secret Service officers on site at the reception and theater.
But beyond politics or security, in the end it is the art that matters most. “When we touch one another through music, we are touching the heart, the mind and the spirit all at once,” WNO’s O’Leary said. “That’s the role of art.”
Lisa Traiger is Washington Jewish Week’s arts correspondent.
