Strauss - Salome (Helsinki, 2022)

Richard Strauss - Salome

Finnish National Opera, Helsinki - 2022

Heikki Tuuli, Christof Loy, Vida Miknevičiūtė, Mihails Culpajevs, Nikolai Schukoff, Karin Lovelius, Andrew Foster-Williams, Elli Vallinoja

ARTE Concert - April 2022

There's something very familiar about the look and feel of this staging of Salome at Helsinki, which is not a surprise as it's a case of the typical Christof Loy production of performers in formal dress in a minimal classical white room look that he has been doing now for decades. There can be variations on the theme, sometimes it's more minimal than others, sometimes Loy can veer off and do something a little more elaborate. Here, it's the very minimal approach. Not quite the almost concert performance semi-staging look of Theodora, a little closer to the formal tuxedos and bow ties of Le nozze di Figaro For Salome? You have to ask why.

Well, I've seen enough Christof Loy productions to have made enough excuses for that kind of thing, not that the end results need any justification. One argument you can make is that without the more typical exoticism of period costumes it allows the audience to focus intently on the intense drama, and they don't come much more intense than Strauss's Salome. The Tetrarch's palace here is a curved white room with two wide pillars on either side, a single brown leather chair and a large rock at the centre of the room. The elegance of the palace is contrasted not with the unkempt appearance of a raving prophet in a cistern as much as one wearing nothing at all. It makes a change from Salome divesting herself seven skimpy veils, but unfortunately it's poor Andrew Foster-Williams (Euryanthe) who is again called upon to bare all and leave the audience not knowing where to look.

If the intention is to bring back a little of the shock value of the source material and the extraordinary interpretation of the psychological Symbolist underpinning of it in Strauss's score, well it's clearly not necessary. This is one work that is still bold, powerful and transgressive and needs little - if anything - in the way of added controversy. Jochanaan's imprecations against Herodias are usually bellowed from off-stage, so it's not even necessary to bring him onto the stage as soon as Loy does. Again you can look at this as being more directly confrontational, for the impression his chaste nakedness makes on Salome who only knows the decadent court of Herod. It certainly gives you an opportunity to think about it in this context.

Where Loy is usually more successful is in how he manages through his technique as a director to bring acting and conviction to the fore. In a Symbolist work where naturalism is not required, the stylised responses here are perfectly in keeping and suited to a dramatic art form that specialises in enhanced reality. This is much more effective when Salome attempts to remove her clothing - long before the Dance of the Seven Veils - her wantonness made explicit to a score of courtiers, who are at first angry at her and then stirred up to try to physically assault her. This spirals into a frenzy of motion in perfect concord with Strauss's score. 

The actual Dance of the Seven Veils is - by way of contrast  - obviously undercut. Instead of traditional eroticism it becomes an exercise in flirtation; a three-day exercise in power and control between Herod, Salome and Jochanaan. Inevitably it similarly draws the testosterone-charged courtiers circle around, creating a kind of dream sequence where even Narraboth is brought back to life. Herod claims his prize, thinking he is victor, but it's Salome who believes she is the one with the power now to fulfil her own desires.

Despite the liberties taken there is no doubt that Loy does successfully tap into the dangerous erotic and taboo undercurrents of Salome in a quite powerful way. He takes on a big challenge by not providing the traditional shock of a demented princess writhing in the gore of a decapitated head, choosing instead to give her a fully formally dressed Jochanaan. If it's about the depth of forbidden desires, this is another way to emphasise how the power of her desires is matched by the power of her madness, her delusion as a damaged victim perhaps of sexual abuse. It's all expressed anyway in the singing and the score and Vida Miknevičiūtė, this production's Salome, is just superb.

There is no question that Loy puts Salome firmly at the centre of this production; everything literally revolves around her desires and corrupted upbringing, a creature that has inherited the dark ambition of her mother and the avarice for power of her stepfather. The singing however is just as fine from Nikolai Schukoff as Herod and Karin Lovelius as Herodias. I'm not convinced that Andrew Foster-Williams presents the ideal image of an object of dark desire, or at least, not as Loy chooses to present him here. The contrast that Loy perhaps strives to express between female desire and the male gaze is not really established. I would venture to say however that Loy is perhaps working to a bigger picture of the relations between men, women and desire; some of his other more recent productions (Euryanthe, Così fan tutte, Francesca da Rimini, Das Wunder der Heliane) all present different views of the same idea.

Musically this sounded good on the streamed broadcast, but without the benefit of live performance or full uncompressed sound, it's unfair to judge. It's clear enough however that this is still one of the most remarkable scores ever written and with Heikki Tuuli conducting the orchestra of the Finnish National Opera, its force was fully felt. That's where the real power of Salome lies, and often the best a director can do is not to get in the way of that. Loy's stage production might not provide the typical reference points, but he does nonetheless draw out terrific performances that show that this opera is much more than a biblical story, is still relevant to our experience of today and still has the ability to shock and amaze.

Links: Finnish National Opera, ARTE Concert

Maskats - Valentina (Riga, 2015 - Webcast)

Arturs Maskats - Valentina

Latvian National Opera, Riga - 2015

Modestas Pitrenas, Viesturs Kairišs, Inga Kalna, Juris Adamsons, Rihards Macanovskis, Mihails Culpajevs, Armands Silinš, Liubov Sokolova, Andžella Goba, Ieva Parša, Krišjanis Norvelis, Samsons Izjumovs, Nauris Puntulis, Laura Grecka, Ieva Kepe

The Opera Platform - 30 May 2015

Premiered in 2014, at the close of the celebrations of Riga's year as European City of Culture, Arturs Maskats' Valentina is undoubtedly an important new opera work; important to Riga and Latvia, and important to a world that is still trying to come to terms with events that happened in recent history during the Second World War. Memory is in fact one of the main themes of the opera, evoked in the libretto, in the structure that this gives the work, and in the music itself. It makes its point very well, even if it can't possibly live up to the ambition of standing as a statement for all the people of Riga during and after the war.

Maskats and his librettist Liāne Langa ambitiously attempt to filter the whole of the experience of the war and its legacy through the figure Valentina Freimane, a famous theatre and film historian who survived the Holocaust. It's ambitious but necessary as the best way to understand the context of the war as a whole is through the experience of one person. Belonging to a Jewish family, in hiding for the duration of the war, Valentina's experience speaks of the horror of the whole, the initial incomprehension, the realisation of war, spreading out to take in the impact it has on close friends, relatives and other citizens in Riga who they come into contact with.

That's challenge enough, and it inevitably feels a little oversimplified trying to compress this naturalistically into the dialogue of the libretto. The opera's creators however aren't aiming for an entirely naturalistic approach. To do so would be to resign the war to an event in the past and neglect the wider impact and its significance through to those living in the present day. Maskats' opera, and particularly the staging by Viesturs Kairišs, attempts to break away from the linear narrative format, dividing the opera up into two parts, the first Act leading up to the beginning of the war, the second part dealing with the aftermath, but also introducing little digressions in time to connect it to a wider historical and personal perspective.

The first half of Valentina, Act I, is constructed then of a number of shorter scenes, episodic snapshots in time that stand mostly as moments of memory and beauty of more innocent times. It starts out in a reflective manner with Valentina seen as an older woman, a screen showing a sepia photo of a street scene, Valentina recalling children singing and playing on the street, family life and being in love. The libretto is littered with references to the summer, the music also evoking warmth and melodies of the 1930s. It's an innocent age, and that innocence is reflected in Valentina choosing to follow her love for Dima rather than the Jewish boy Alexey that her family would like for her, Valentina oblivious to the situation elsewhere in Latvia and to the consequences that this will have in the years ahead.

Those elements gradually make their presence felt as the first Act progresses, the music taking on a more militaristic edge and a marching rhythm as the events in the wider world are discussed. How it relates to Latvia is spoken about in real practical terms, but the libretto also uses an undertaker to give a sense of general unease and uncertainty for all in his fearful dreams. Valentina's role however can also be seen to reflect Latvia's position, caught between two great powers, Russia and Germany, in the middle of something they have no control over and a great deal over. As Alexey also says later, he is now a grown man, but still feel like a child, "still unaware what game he will have to play".

Musically, Maskats' compositions in the first half have something in common with Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen. There's no direct reference other than the use of national folk music, but the accumulation of moments add up to a celebration of life and experience, of time and the changes that time brings. Later, there's more of a Tchaikovsky to the dramatic underscoring and flowing melody that works effectively. Most notably however, there is a very specific Latvian character to Valentina, on how events during the war have had an impact that has shaped national character and outlook. There's an attempt to consolidate the pre-war character through a stirring ode to Riga close to the end of Act I, which might have sounded like nationalistic and celebratory were the reverie not shattered by a soldier appearing gun first from a manhole in the middle of it and a red flag appearing.

Reflecting the loss of national identity, or even the personal identity of being part of a family, Valentina and Latvia are further divided and categorised by the yellow stars that appear at the start of Act II. In contrast to the episodic reverie of Act I, Act II has more of the flow of a nightmare. In attempting to capture the horror of war, and a wider perspective on matters such as collaboration, Act II loses Valentina as a focus for the opera while she is in hiding. The opera too consequently fails to hold its focus musically and dramatically, the incidents certainly horrific on their own, but still not really being capable of hitting the mark at the full gravity of the situation. It's an impossible task in any case and probably a mistake to even attempt it. While it certainly doesn't trivialise the experience for all those concerned, it's beyond the realm of this opera and Muskats' tonal melodic music to truly express and encompass dramatically the horror and the greater evil by merely putting singing 'champagne Nazis' on the stage.

Viesturs Kairišs' direction makes the very best of the staging of Valentina in a more or less traditional manner, without any clever effects. The episodic structure of the first half has a consistency of tone, makes bold gestures where they ought to be, and is subtle when a lighter hand is needed. Adopting the perspective of the older Valentina, it effectively manages exactly the way a person would tread delicately through those memories, with fondness for those times of family and community warmth, and with the horror of the symbols (red flags, yellow stars) that intrude on those memories and usher in less pleasant events. In line with the dramatic shift in Act II, it feels less effective at trying to place a concrete reality on the war crimes, but certainly by the end, with the reappearance of Valentina - a strong performance from Inga Kalna - it all comes together to make a strong impression indeed.

Links: Opera Platform