A. B. YEHOSHUA’S QUEER ORPHEUS: OVERCOMING THE ISRAELI ASHKENAZI-SEPHARDI FRACTURE

This paper explores the queer dimension of the operatic reception of Orpheus and its subsequent reception in Israeli literature. First, I look at Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), its happy end, and its queer performance history. Secondly, I examine the reception of Gluck’s opera as an interpretive key to Israeli writer A. B. Yehoshua’s Five Seasons (1986), situating the novel in the context of the Ashkenazi-Sephardi fracture. I argue that Gluck’s queer Orpheus gestures to the queerness of the protagonist, Molcho, which in turn signals the possibility of blurring and overcoming Israeli intra-Jewish ethnic divisions.