Strange Strauss Salomé, Bayerisches Staatsoper

A strange Strauss Salomé from the Bayerisches Staatsoper.  Salomé is a strange opera, whose meaning is elusive and defies easy answers. Strange isn't wrong per se. Sometimes strangeness yields great insight even if it might take a degree of insight to grasp in the first place.  In this case,  strangeness seems to have been done for its own sake, without much thought behind it.  For one thing, this Salomé started not with Strauss but with Mahler. A veiled man appears, apparently singing a song from Kindertotenlieder, though the tessitura is so high it's close to falsetto.  Is Pavol Breslik (Narraboth) singing or mouthing the song of an offstage singer ?  Perhaps Krzysztof Warlikowski wants to make connections between parents and children in the songs, generation conflict in Salomé and the offstage voice of Jochanaan, the idea doesn't fit, or go very far, and isn't developed in the rest of the staging. 

In the palace, the courtiers lounge about like zombies, their body language stylized. They smoke and grasp tiny vials, whose purpose will be revealed later.  Some sort of erotic connection between Hérodias (Michaela Schuster) and the Page (Rachael Wilson), which makes you wonder about the dynamic between mother and daughter, but distracts from the obvious kinkiness of Herodes' (Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke) feelings from Salomé. (Marlis Petersen). This is a dysfunctional family, in dysfunctional times,  but caricature isn't the way to go.  Jochanaan (Wolfgang Koch) crawls out from the floorboards  A truly Wagnerian apparition. "Heisst ihn herkommen, auf dass er die Stimme Dessen höre, der in den Wüsten und in den Häusern der Könige gekündet hat" delivered with baleful portent. The horns that introduce this passage and the timpani with which it ends are there for a purpose. Perhaps that's why Warlikowski emphasises Salomé's sadistic streak.  She's rewarded for her cruelty by Johannan's curse but the masochistic bitch (not the singer) likes it.  Is he making connections between Wagner, Strauss, and Hitler?  Such connections may or may not be valid but here there's so much going on that they can't be developed beyond superficial shock level. Strauss's opera is much more nuanced, more sympathetic to female sexuality and suffering,  and doesn't lose sight of the fact that Salomé, like Elektra, might not be what she becomes had she not been abused herself.

The banquet in the palace is staged, the guests lined up one side of a long table, an obvious parody of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, though the connections are dubious. Sure, Christ and his apostles were Jewish, but what does that imply ?  Does a smell of anti-semitism cling to this staging  where cynicism overides humanity ?  Herodes  justhappened to be Jewish : Strauss's opera is about people, not Judaism itself. The introduction to the first dance was gorgeously played- exotic, seductive, elusive.  The dance itself rather more predictable - Salomé in white lace embracing a dancer in a skeleton suit.  As if to distract attention further, a multi coloured backdrop  dominates the scene, with pseudo-medieval figures like lion and unicorn, which might please audiences who want colourful decor at all costs, but isn't really relevant. Any "beauty" in this scene is delusion. When the head of Jochannan is delivered to Salomé, in a box, Petersen alternates sensuality with sharp, brittle flutterings.  Now, for the trick ending. the final scene takes place in another busy, crowded backdrop. Jochannan's back, fullyl restored, having a cigarette with the crowd. Nabbaroth's back, too, holding a gun. Later he hands out treats, like at a party.  What is in those little vials ? Cyanide ? Strange I can cope with, but this confounds me.  Warlikowski generally is a good director but this time he seems to want to channel Barrie Kosky.  Not a good thing ! Wonderful playing though, conducted by Kirill Petrenko, who is, I think, better at opera than in orchestral work. 

Rock solid in every way : Strauss Salomé, Salzburg

Strauss Salomé : Asmik Grigorian (photo Ruth Walz)

Richard Strauss Salomé from the Salzburg Festival, conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, a powerful interpretation of an opera which defies easy answers, performed and produced with such distinction thast it suceeds on every level.  The words "Te saxa Loquuntur" (The stones are speaking to you) are projected onto the stage.  Salzburg regulars will recognize this as a reference to the rock foundations on which part of the city is built, and the traditions the Festival represents. In this opera, the characters talk at cross-purposes, hearing without understanding. The phrase suggests that what might not be explicitly spoken might have much to reveal.

 Behind a gauze sceen, a madonna figure with lace veil and golden crown materializes, laying down her veil.  Dark figures appear, crushing the veil and crown underfoot.   Princess Salomé ( a sensational Asmik Grigorian) enters. "Wie schön ist die Prinzessin Salome heute Nacht!" sings Narraboth (Julien Prégardien, vocally recognizable even beneath the makeup), his lines repeating in different  patterns.   Dark swelling chords surge from the orchestra, Salomé puts on the veil and crown. Like the Madonna she's worshipped (by Narraboth) but later treated as a whore (by Herodes - John Daszak). Horns and trombones call from the pit, heralding the voice of Jochanaan (Gábor Bretz).

This staging (by Romeo Castellucci) manages to depict  the multiple levels in the opera as a coherent whole. Instead of depicting the dungeon as an underground cavern, it uses the simple device of a black hole projected onto the stage, from which Jochanaan emerges, first garbed as a mythic beast hardly visible against the blackness behind him.  The hole is nearly always present, breaking into the marble and mirror glass neatness of the palace. Later it will serve as a technical device disguising quick scene changes.  This is perceptive since the opera itself deals with the way Jochanaan's presence unsettles Salomé, and the way the subconcious intrudes into consciousness. Bretz holds aloft a circular object, like an opaque mirror.

Mirror images abound. Salomé speaks at Jochanaan with images of beauty proliferating in nearly every line, swiftly changing and moving, Grigorian singing with good rhythmic deliberation, almost as though she was already singing the dance of veils. As Salomé moves in on Jochanaan to kiss him, the orchestra wails in horror. "Du bist verflucht." sings Bretz, with malevolent force "Du bist verflucht, Salomé!"  Welser-Möst brings out the strident dissonace, brasses blaring and exhaling - not unlike over-excited human screams.  Then Grigorian dances, slowly, in time to the music, her legs exposed. It's explicitly erotic, though chaste.  Tubas and baleful bassoons announce the entry of Herodes and Herodias (Anna Maria Chiuri) and their retinue, stepping over Narraboth’s corpse, unperturbed. More characters at cross-purposes. "Hört ihr es nicht?" "Ich höre nichts"   Clarity in the singing makes the exchanges bristle with tension. This was particularly effective in the interaction between Herodes and the Jews and Nazarenes.  They too are "dancing" games of non-communication. When the voice of Jochanaan blasts through again, Bretz cuts through, firm and direct.

A monolith marked "Saxa" is shifted, revealing Grigorian, now in a silk shift, looking vulnerable.  But something has changed in her.  Her lines are now fierce, almost monotone, rising to maniacal savagery. Now she's seen in a circle, surounded by white liquid. No whitewash, not milk so much as the symbolism of the moon of which she sang before she encountered Jochannan "Ja, wie die Schönheit einer Jungfrau, die rein geblieben ist." Herodes grows more insistent, and the red paint, covering Daszak’s face like a mask, melts away, staining his clean white shirt.  "Ich will den Kopf des Jochanaan" sings Grigorian, her vouce rising to wild crescendo. Still, Herodes prevaricates, his lines disintegrated into horrified fragments.  Welser-Möst hold nothing back, defining the turbulence with its sharp brass alarums and thunderclaps of percussion.  Grigorian alternates between ferocity and tenderness,  searching lines reaching out, then receding into regret. A tour de force performance, made even more moving by the sensitive filming which picks up the emotion in her expressive face.  The dancing here is in the voice part and the music swirling around it: Grigorian embraces the headless corpse of the prophet, seated like a Babylonian statue, carved in stone.  "Ich habe ihn geküsst, deinen Mund", she sings against a luminous orchestral background which rises to strange, unsettling valediction.  And so Salomé dies, her head poking from a hole in the ground, as if on a silver platter.

This is a production of surreal, esoteric beauty, so full of subtle detail that it will, in time, reveal even more depths.  Kudos to the dramaturge Piersandra Di Matteo.  But it also reveals extremely high levels of musicianship, both in the singing and orchestral playing. Since it is co-sponsored by ORF, 3sat and UNITEL in co-operation with Wiener Philharmoniker and the Salzburg Festival, no doubt a DVD will be forthcoming. In which case grab it. 

Strauss Salomé - Royal Opera House review

Perceptive review of Richard Strauss Salomé by Claire Seymour HERE in Opera Today.  Read in full, it's extremely well written. Here are some quotes :

"This is a Salome who is less interested in the bodily pleasures offered by the pure masculinity of Jokanaan than in the narcissistic celebration of her own vicious carnality. And, Angela Denoke is just the singer-actress to convey the princess’s escalating self-awareness and indulgence in emotional extremities"  Denoke "may not have had the requisite consistent sheen at the top, and indeed may have struggled at times to hit the uppermost notes truly and securely — who wouldn’t given the unalleviated high tessitura? — but she possesses an emotional sincerity, communicated through an infinite variety of colours, shades and shadows, which wins the hearts and minds of the audience. Slightly tense at the start, she went from strength to strength: the final statement of her insistent demand, “Give me the head of Jokanaan”, was truly chilling in its honest exposure of human egoism; and in the final scene, as she cradled the bloodied head of the prophet, at times tender, then terrifyingly solipsistic, she communicated powerfully the destructive yet vulnerable self-regard of the eponymous anti-heroine before her thankfully inevitable death."

"Andris Nelsons conducted the orchestra of the Royal Opera House in a thrilling, precise yet disquieting rendition of Strauss’s provocatively extrovert score. Solo lines emerged effortlessly from the luxuriant orchestral canvas. The seductive harmonies which foreshadow Rosenkavier — employed therein to depict exuberant sexual freedom, piquant desire and joyful satisfaction — were here bitterly destabilized by disconcerting instrumental colours textures and extremity of register, which Nelsons exploited to perfection. The conductor perfectly balanced measure and excess, liberation and control. His ability to restrain his naturally exuberant forces until precise moments of erotic release was nowhere more evident than in the Dance of the Seven Veils."