The Dissonant Howl of “Salome”

The Biblical fig of Salome, Princess of Judea, who dances earlier Herod Antipas and demands the caput of John the Baptist arsenic a reward, infiltrated late-nineteenth-century civilization arsenic an cause of utmost decadence—“the goddess of immortal Hysteria,” arsenic the novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans called her. In Oscar Wilde’s play “Salomé,” written successful French successful 1892, the princess goes truthful acold arsenic to buss the prophet’s lifeless lips. In 1905, Richard Strauss utilized Wilde’s play arsenic the ground for his opera “Salome,” which titillated audiences each implicit Europe and horrified the committee of the Metropolitan Opera. To a degree, the quality exemplifies the misogynistic fin-de-siècle trope of women arsenic vampiric beasts. Yet Wilde’s implicit recognition with Salome complicates matters. Hedwig Lachmann, the German writer whose incisive translation of “Salomé” became the libretto for Strauss’s opera, saw the princess arsenic an “ethereal being” who feels “alienated from the earthy corruption of her surroundings.” The existent villain is Herod, who, successful his hypocritical substance of slobbering lust and grandstanding moralism, is simply a exemplary antheral of power.

The voluptuous unit of Strauss’s people adds to the richness of the conception. At the crook of the past century, Strauss was experimenting with unprecedented levels of dissonance, and the grinding harmonies of “Salome” endanger to undermine the tonal system, arsenic the young Arnold Schoenberg did not neglect to notice. When Herod enters, the euphony lurches betwixt saccharine waltz episodes and spasms of Expressionistic anarchy—a fracturing of the lingua franca. Salome, successful the grisly last scene, reasserts a grade of tonal stability, but dissonant uproar resumes erstwhile Herod commands her death. The curtain has gone up connected twentieth-century chaos.

New York audiences person witnessed 2 radically divergent views of “Salome” this season. The Met has marshalled its lavish resources to contiguous its archetypal caller staging of the enactment since 2004: hulking sets, images of artful horror, Wagnerian voices, a monster orchestra unleashing a tempest of sound. In February, Heartbeat Opera, spending a fraction of the Met’s budget, offered a riveting mentation of “Salome” connected a enclosure scale, utilizing an statement for 8 clarinettists and 2 percussionists which the composer Dan Schlosberg had devised for the occasion. Both productions succeeded successful repositioning Salome arsenic a perverse instrumentality of justice. She pushes Herod’s societal bid to its logical extreme, the constituent astatine which it is consumed by its ain malignancy.

Claus Guth, who directed “Salome” astatine the Met, shows sympathy for the princess from the outset. Before the opera begins, we spot a neglected miss playing with a doll and past throwing it to the ground. Six girls of assorted ages shadiness Salome passim the production, evoking a horrific childhood. They marque particularly unsettling appearances successful a concrete-panelled dungeon beneath the palace, wherever John the Baptist, oregon Jochanaan, is simply a prisoner. Flashes of menace accumulate until, amid the orchestral melee that introduces Salome’s last monologue, we spot not lone Jochanaan’s severed caput but besides his decapitated corpse. The young Salomes basal astir successful a daze: it is implied that Herod abused them successful the aforesaid space. Given that Herod considers Jochanaan a antheral of God, the beheading of the prophet seems, if not justified, understandable. Whatever is deemed beatified successful specified a spot bears responsibility.

If Guth had recovered a comparably vivid aesthetic for the palace itself, helium mightiness person had a classical accumulation connected his hands. Alas, Herod’s satellite is numbingly dreary, astatine likelihood with the nasty glitter of the score. The mounting is Victorian, but arsenic if covered successful ash. Decadence is indicated by ersatz-paganistic goings connected successful the background: men wearing ram’s heads, a bare maiden, spectral servants. In interviews, Guth has named Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” arsenic an inspiration—a regrettable choice, fixed the feebleness of the equivalent scenes successful the film. High-end grotesqueries retired of Fellini oregon Visconti would person been much apt.

The South African soprano Elza van den Heever brings formidable acting abilities to the rubric role, handily conveying Salome’s layers of trauma and her damaged core. In the Dance of the Seven Veils, the vocalist remains clothed, directing the younger Salomes successful a bid of pantomimes that hint astatine what she has endured. Vocally, van den Heever falls abbreviated of the broad mastery shown by Karita Mattila successful the Met’s erstwhile production. On opening night, the soprano’s apical notes blazed retired with a chill gleam, but her little and mediate registers lacked the heft needed to punch done Strauss’s dense textures. Peter Mattei, arsenic Jochanaan, had nary specified problem, singing with sustained spot and quality of tone. At times, though, I wanted much accent connected the deranged vigor of the prophet’s visions. Gerhard Siegel, a seasoned Herod, navigated the king’s tongue-twisting harangues with ease, yet helium resorted to the benignant of barking-and-rasping caricature that is each excessively acquainted successful “Salome” stagings. Michelle DeYoung was a somewhat stolid Herodias, Piotr Buszewski a fiercely ardent Narraboth.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s chronically overscheduled euphony director, seems to deficiency the rehearsal clip to found chiseled stylistic profiles for the operas helium conducts. He plowed done “Salome” with the aforesaid plush, effusive mode helium brings to Wagner oregon Puccini: the score’s ragged edges were blunted, its whiplash contrasts blurred. Seven seasons into his tenure astatine the Met, Nézet-Séguin has yet to marque overmuch of a mark. There is thing faceless astir his music-making; everything sounds reasonably good, but thing sticks successful the mind.

I person nary thought what benignant of late-night brainstorming league prompted the leaders of Heartbeat Opera to transcribe “Salome” for an ensemble dominated by clarinets, with saxophones and recorders thrown into the mix. But I ideate that the originative squad was looking astatine the archetypal leafage of the score, connected which a clarinet plays a slithering bitonal standard and past a dancing fig successful C-sharp minor. Why not instrumentality with that instrumentality to the end? The lustrous weirdness of Strauss’s euphony survives the experimentation intact; astatine times, it is heightened. One masterstroke of Schlosberg’s statement is to delegate the low, groaning chords that travel Salome’s enactment “Ah! I person kissed your mouth, Jochanaan” to soprano recorders, which emit a maximally eerie hoot.

The amusement took spot astatine Irondale, successful Brooklyn. Elizabeth Dinkova, the director, moved the enactment to the contiguous day, with flickering screens suggesting the surveillance apparatus of a paranoid regime. The singers utilized an English translation of the Lachmann text, by Tom Hammond. In an intriguing revision, the Heartbeat squad expanded the relation of the Page, who is besotted with the Syrian skipper Narraboth, who is successful crook besotted with Salome. When Narraboth kills himself successful despair, Wilde has the Page present a saccharine small eulogy for him. Strauss chopped that passage, but Schlosberg wove a mates of lines from it—“He was similar a member to me, person than a brother”—into the interlude that precedes Herod’s entrance. The mezzo-soprano Melina Jaharis recovered an oasis of pathos successful that moment, though the determination to contiguous the quality arsenic pistillate meant that the cheery subtext fell by the wayside.

The Heartbeat cast, liberated from the request to bellow implicit Straussian mayhem, offered an unnervingly intimate position connected the opera’s cauldron of kink. Summer Hassan was a convincingly girlish Salome, her crisp, poised transportation mirroring Lachmann’s presumption of the quality arsenic a disturbed innocent. Patrick Cook recovered successful Herod the strain of queasy lyricism that Siegel missed astatine the Met. Nathaniel Sullivan embodied a sinewy Jochanaan who is sorely tempted by Salome’s advances. Jacob Ashworth conducted with authority. I wasn’t persuaded by Dinkova’s ending, successful which the Page shoots the principals and past departs. Guth landed connected a much haunting and ambiguous image: Salome walking into a luminous mist, leaving huffy world behind. ♦