Richard Strauss - Salome
Staatsoper Hamburg, 2023
Kent Nagano, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Asmik Grigorian, Kyle Ketelsen, John Daszak, Violeta Urmana, Oleksiy Palchykov, Jana Kurucová
ARTE Concert - 29th October 2023
Dimitri Tcherniakov's opera productions have tended to look very much alike in recent times, all tending towards contemporary upper middle-class settings, looking rather brown and dull. The interpretation or reinterpretation of the works in question has however never been dull. They may rarely accord accurately with the original stage directions but the director's approach at least finds new ways to consider the meaning of the works and what they say about contemporary society and the place of the individual within it, often from a psychoanalytical perspective. So while Tcherniakov's production of Strauss's Salome for Hamburg looks similar to his recent stage productions, you can imagine he will nonetheless find considerable riches in the psychology or psychopathy of this particular work.
It doesn't take too long to identify the little twists to the stage directions in this production and find them intriguing enough to see where he will take them. It's a dinner party for Herod's birthday and the assembled well-to-do guests are arranged around the table, some slightly outlandishly dressed. Narraboth observing the pale beauty of the princess Salome in the moonlight is not one of the waiters standing around the walls as you might expect, but one of the guests. The princess has made a late sullen appearance at the table in a white puffa jacket and Ren & Stimpy T-shirt, rejecting the welcome of her mother Herodias.
The initial proclamation from Jokanaan then does not come from a deep cistern but from the other end of the table, from man in a brown jacket and jeans, sporting glasses and comb-over (his hair definitely not like clusters of black grapes), smoking a cigar and intoning his grave pronouncements from a book he is reading. He seems out of place here, lost in his own world, bearing perhaps an air of disdain or self-righteousness, but possibly just oblivious to the frivolity of the dinner party. This Jokanaan is not a prisoner, but a guest, respected for his wisdom, but evidently seen as a bit eccentric.
You could also describe Tcherniakov's take on this opening scene as eccentric, but bearing in mind what we already know about how this party is going to play out, it's intriguing enough to wonder how this idea is going to be developed. Well, one aspect of Oscar Wilde's play is about social decadence and illicit lusts that are acceptable as long as they remain hidden under a mask of outward respectability, and this suggested openness of those behaviours provides a good opportunity to expose that. Not that any further enticement is needed as the work itself is still for me one of the most daring, provocative and hauntingly beautiful works of opera ever written. With Kent Nagano conducting, it enthralls from the first notes here, drawing you into a unique and very specific mood that never lets up as it progresses unbroken on a real-time path towards its shocking conclusion. Some fine singing from Oleksiy Palchykov as Narraboth certainly invites you to remain into the fascinating sound world of dark psychopathology.
As powerful as the work remains, what is still a challenge is finding a way to bring out is the shock nature of the work's subversive element of Wilde’s marriage of Symbolist poetic imagery with Biblical subject matter and a decadent high society. Removing the mystical status of Jokanaan, and presumably removing the removing of the head is going to make that harder, even if the conclusion might have lost some shock value now (but not much). One way is how the setting of this production attempts to bring what people really think about each other is brought much more into the open. When Salome complains about the lascivious looks of John Daszak's Herod and her mother's tolerance of his attentions, she does it in front of them and the guests, while they try to laugh it off as Salome just being Salome. It really heightens the sense of murderous intent.
Again however, Tcherniakov seems determined at every stage to undercut the familiar set pieces and find other means of bringing out ...well, whatever it is he is attempting to bring out. The failure of Narraboth to kill himself is neither here nor there, the Tetrarch slipping in blood only figuratively as a joke for the uproar that has developed at his party should dissipate the dark Symbolist imagery, but the tension somehow still remains. Salome's reaction and outburst at Jokanaan's rejection of her advances that plays out alongside this and the theological dispute of the Jews is however very strange. Delving through her old suitcase that her outraged mother - an excellent Violeta Urmana - throws at her feet, she dresses up with white face paint as a kind of a mime artist or Pierrot figure and sinks into shocked silence.
Similarly, Tcherniakov refuses to rely on the familiar explicit eroticism of the Dance of the Seven Veils, but tries to move past that and find another way of bringing out the uncomfortable nature of the relationship between Herod and Salome. Rather than strip off layers of clothing, Salome is almost naked already as Herod lasciviously dresses the drained, disconnected, semi-comatose Salome in a bizarre clown-like outfit. The whole scene remains static as the dance winds up to an anti-climatic conclusion. Salome remains impassive up until the moment that Herod refuses her wish, when she smashes a glass and threatens to take it to her throat. Kyle Ketelsen's Jokanaan it has to be said, also remains impassive, observing dispassionately as she calls for his head.
She may not be permitted to express anything to feed the lascivious illicit desires of Herod during her dance, but elsewhere the singing role is more than expressive enough to bring out everything that needs to be said/unsaid, and Asmik Grigorian is expressive enough in her singing and acting performance at the call for execution and the aftermath for this to remain as charged as it can possibly be. I'm not sure anyone can fully explore the madness of Salome's obsession and her corruption, but it's there in the libretto and the writing for the voice waiting to be brought to life in performance. Grigorian is lyrical and forceful in her delivery, not particularly loud or strong to carry over the massed forces of the orchestra, but it's an impressive and compelling performance nonetheless that really brings out the complexity of this character, her nature, her emotions and reactions.
Tcherniakov and Grigorian take this as far as it can go, although with this director you always have to wonder if he doesn't take it so far into absurdity that he sometimes undoes the good that has been established. There is no moon, no blood, no headless corpse, so you have to look elsewhere to find out what drives these characters. What is it that Salome wants that Jokanaan’s existence denies her? Respect? Attention? Love? Death? Self worth? Whatever you think it is, whether Jokanaan lives or dies, it's beyond a spoiled, over-indulged rich girl to understand or obtain. The seed of a sick brood, she is only capable of wreaking destruction. Much as you miss Wilde's haunting imagery, Grigorian's performance is enough to ensure that the power of this extraordinary work - still one of the finest in the whole opera repertoire - still comes through in the Hamburg production.
External links: Staatsoper Hamburg, ARTE Concert
