SALOME by STRAUSS

Alex Penda as Salome at Santa Fe Opera (photo by Ken Howard)

We have always thrilled to Richard Strauss' 1905 opera Salome but the current production at the Santa Fe Opera offered a fresh and Freudian interpretation by director Daniel Slater that kept us on the edge of our seat.  Mr. Slater chose to set the opera at the turn of the 20th c. when Freud's ideas about sexuality and the unconscious were still new and shocking but not yet accepted.  The titular character is revealed by some innovative staging to have observed her father's murder at the hands of her uncle Herod, the same tetrarch who now lusts for her.

This is a family right out of Krafft-Ebing. The lascivious tetrarch Herod makes no secret of his lust for his niece. Salome's mother is unsuccessful at reining him in. She believes that Salome wants Jochanaan's head out of loyalty to her because he has been cursing her from his place of imprisonment. It is not difficult to believe that Oscar Wilde penned the scandalous story on which the opera is based.

The air is heavy with lust.  Herod, Salome, and Naraboth, captain of the guard, are all passionate about beauty. Herod and Naraboth are both driven wild with desire for Salome who is similarly driven wild by lust for Jochanaan who is passionate only about his religious beliefs. Her perceived rejection by the prophet leads her to the final mad request for his head. Hell hath no fury, as they say!

The Dance of the Seven Veils, in Mr. Slater's version, has no veils and no nudity. Salome dances for her father using mainly her graceful arms in a most seductive way.  Part of the way through the dance, her mind drifts to her childhood memories of Herod murdering her father and leading her away. (Shades of Hamlet!) Although this is a directorial innovation, it seems right there in the music.

In the role of Salome, Alex Penda shines like the star that she is. She is sufficiently petite in form to convince as an adolescent with a powerful soprano that cuts right through Strauss' sizable orchestra. 

As Herod, tenor Robert Brubaker tackled the high-lying tessitura without strain and injected his character with a real personality--not a sympathetic one but an interesting one. He is clearly at odds with his wife Herodias; he is a bit frightened but also fascinated by Jochanaan and his preaching while Herodias is offended by Jochanaan's attacks on her and wants him eliminated. Mezzo-soprano Michaela Martens fulfilled her role in a most believable way. This is a marriage like many we have seen in contemporary times, a marriage in which husband and wife barely tolerate one another

Bass-baritone Ryan McKinny made a swell Jochanaan with his resonant portentous instrument.  He does not appear as a filthy starving prisoner chained in a cistern, but rather an intellectual writing at a desk in a room of the palace.  This of course goes a long way toward helping us understand Salome's attraction to his white skin, black hair and red lips.

The opera opens with tenor Brian Jagde as Captain of the Guard mooning over "die Prinzessin Salome".  Pun intended. He compares her to the moon. Page Megan Marino tries to talk him out of it. He kills himself when he realizes that she is lusting after the prophet and not him.  Mr. Jagde's singing was filled with luster and passion; we were sorry to lose him so early in the opera!

Just as Shakespeare provided comic relief in his tragedies, Salome provided a few giggles in the form of five Jews arguing theology. We were delighted to see several of our favorite apprentices in these roles: Christopher Trapani, Roy Hage, Cullen Gandy, Aaron Short, and Kevin Thompson. Nicholas Brownlee and Tyler Putnam appeared as soldiers.

We could not have asked for a better conductor than David Robertson who captured the passionate sweep of Strauss' thrilling music. Although this opera scandalized audiences at the time of it's premiere, it established Strauss' career as a composer of operas. The work has earned its place in the canon.

Set and Costume Design by Leslie Travers worked out well. We particularly liked Salome's virginal white dress and Herodias' elaborate gown. The men all wore military uniforms, replete with sashes, epaulettes and emblems. This only struck us as peculiar on the bodies of the five Jews!  Who knew that Jews were so honored in fin de siecle Austria!

(c) meche kroop

PARSING PARSIFAL

The reader may be forgiven for thinking this is a photo of a meeting of Mormon missionaries taken during our recent trip to Utah.  No, what you are seeing is a scene from Act I of Parsifal at The Metropolitan Opera; depicted are the Knights of the Holy Grail.  The Met Orchestra performed their usual magic under the magic wand of Israeli conductor Asher Fisch.  The roles were wisely cast; tenor Jonas Kaufmann's dusky tenor and lithely youthful  body filled the role of Parsifal the benighted swan-slayer to the perfection promised by his earlier appearance as Siegmund at the Met; Bass René Pape was a very human Gurnemanz, coloring his voice from porter to stout as called for by the text, no less wonderful than in his Met appearance as Boris; Baritone Peter Mattei suffered piteously and convincingly as Amfortas such that we breathed a sigh of relief when he recovered in the final scene; Bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin was just as evil and repulsive as one would want Klingsor to be;  Kundry was finely sung and acted by Michaela Martens, replacing an indisposed Katarina Dalayman.

With all that going for it, we found François Girard's production, admired by some and tolerated by others, unsatisfying and nonspiritual.  Whatever he intended with his "concept" we experienced the spirituality only in Wagner's passionate music and inventive orchestration.  We had to close our eyes against the Mormon missionaries, the parched earth, the fissure, the weird anti-seductive hand-jive of the Flower Maidens in Act II, the watery stage blood through which the singers had to wade.  We had to close our eyes and listen to the way Wagner could take a theme and turn it upside-down and inside-out and weave it throughout the orchestral sections so that it just washed over us. 

So we have no love for Set Designer Michael Levine's scorched earth, nor any for Costume Designer Thibault Vancraenenbroeck's contemporary duds, nor any for Choreographer Carolyn Choa with her herky-jerky Flower Maidens.  Lighting by David Finn never seemed to match the time of day mentioned in the libretto.  Video Designer Peter Flaherty, however, mounted some lovely projections that slightly overcame the drab sets.

That just means more love left over for the stellar cast and orchestra!

The two 40-minute intermissions gave us plenty of time to think about the recurrent themes in Wagner's operas--the orphaned unenlightened youth who goes on a quest, the power-hungry monster, the woman who sleeps for a long long time, the struggle between good and evil, the sacrifice of a body part (best not to ask), the severe punishment for the sin of sexual desire, women who tease, the wanderer who belongs nowhere, the swan, redemption through sacrifice, and so on.  One could have a field day, or write a book, about all these symbols.  But...let us consider this.  Everyone brings their own set of meanings to symbols which are therefore not universal.  To Westerners, black symbolizes death; in the East it is white; and in New York it is just sophistication!  So...you may experience the Parsifal legend as spiritual or you may experience it as pseudo-religious claptrap.  Just enjoy the music!

(c) meche kroop