Based on the infamous 1985 Achille Lauro incident, in which four Palestinians hijacked a cruise ship and killed a Jewish passenger before finally surrendering, John Adams's controversial 1991 opera now seems especially relevant in its evenhanded, humanizing treatment of both Israeli and Palestinian suffering. Penny Woolcock's adaptation, filmed at actual locations across the Middle East, uses the cinematic medium to flesh out the stories of each protagonist with flashbacks, fictional narratives, archival footage, and added dramatizations, creating a world as immediate as any documentary, yet as theatrical as the greatest operas.