Richard Strauss - Salome
Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa - 2016
Fabio Luisi, Rosetta Cucchi, Lise Lindstrom, Jane Henschel, Herwig Pecoraro, Mark Delavan, Patrick Vogel, Marina Ogii, Marcello Nardis, Alessandro Fantoni, Naoyuki Okada, Jason Kim, Alessandro Busi, Frano Lufi, Manuel Pierattelli, Roberto Maietta, Luca Gallo, Alessandro Busi, Beate Vollack
Teatro Carlo Felice Live Streaming - 25 May 2016
Genoa's Teatro Carlo Felice production of Salome doesn't appear to offer any specific interpretation or modernisation of the work. If it seems to take a more generic approach that never strays far from the expected lines, it nonetheless captures the destructive and almost self-defeating essence of what is vital about Strauss's first great operatic masterpiece.
The source and the context of the creation of Strauss's version of Salome are highly relevant in assessing its importance, its greatness, its legacy, as in some respects it's emblematic of a time of great change in music and in modernist thinking. Strauss had seen Wilde's play in a fairly faithful German-language translation by Hedwig Lachmann and the play's ideas and sensibility clearly resonate with what was happening in turn of the century Vienna. The impact that the work made on him provided Strauss with a challenge to replicate it within the world of music.
As a source, and for what the work says, Oscar Wilde's scandalous play is far more important than the original Biblical tale. All Wilde's plays - even the drawing room comedies like 'An Ideal Husband' and 'The Importance of Being Earnest' - are subversive in one way or another, gently mocking Victorian mores and attitudes. 'Salome' however is a little more daring. Written in French, Wilde knew that the play would never be performed in England due to blasphemy laws that prevented Biblical characters appearing on the stage, and it freed him creatively to expand on the florid poetry that would twist the exotic Biblical setting into a taboo-breaking tale of forbidden lust and death.
In some respects then, at a level above the purely textual, 'Salome' is about destroying conventional views; quite literally delving into the cistern of corruption that lies beneath the comfortable facade of respectable society. It's easy now to see what attracted Strauss to the challenge of putting this transgressive text to a new and more rigorous form of music. This was the kind of subject that would take the Liebestod philosophy of Strauss's idol Wagner one stage further in musical terms, break with convention and upset a few people. There wasn't much point in doing anything else and, up to that point, there would be nothing that pushed musical boundaries further than Salome.
So perfectly interlocked is the music with the text, the entire piece one continuous flow of intense poetry, that Salome really is a work that speaks for itself. In practical terms the set needs to be generally all-purpose for the locations of the continuous one-act opera and, like Strauss's subsequent opera Elektra, it needs to be focussed on establishing mood. The Carlo Felice production in Genoa takes a fairly generic approach then that is vaguely Biblical in look and feel, but perhaps actually looks a little more Greek tragedy. In fact, I'm sure they could use the same set just as effectively for Elektra with minimal changes, but there is at least a commonality between the treatment of the subjects in these two one-act Strauss tone-poem operas.
Salome, like Elektra, is about a corrupt or degenerate family (a nation, a way of life) that is being eaten up by its own descent into self-destruction. The facade of respectability is being stripped away to reveal decadence and dark lusts, and much of this is already there in the music and the poetry of the libretto. Tiziano Santi's sets provide a fairly conventional response to this, with a dark pit in the centre of the stage from which Jochanaan's warnings of the coming of a new way emanate. Salome dangerously flirts around this pit, the product of a corrupt union, trying to bend the promise of Jochanaan's visions to her own twisted will. Aside from the requirements of the stage direction and lighting to meet the drama, the only significant change to the set is to show the downfall of a royal line in the fracturing of the surrounding marble framework of the palace.
Fabio Luisi keeps a tight rein on proceedings from the orchestra pit, but like Rosetta Cucchi's direction, it doesn't really seem to plumb the dark depths of the work, although admittedly in a work as intense as this, that's difficult to judge from a live internet stream rather than from inside the theatre. Lise Lindstrom has that precise Turandot voice that matches Salome's requirements of meeting Wagnerian force with Puccinian high lyricism. The dynamic between her fluctuating states of reverie and fury isn't perhaps quite as pronounced as it might be but she has the voice and all the dangerous allure for this role. Herwig Pecoraro and Jane Henschel show their suitability and experience in the roles of Herod and Herodias. Mark Delavan is a fabulous deeply intoned Jochanaan.
Links: Teatro Carlo Felice Streaming
Richard Strauss - Salome
Wiener Staatsoper, 2015
Simone Young, Boleslaw Barlog, Herwig Pecoraro, Elisabeth Kulman, Catherine Naglestad, Tomasz Konieczny, Norbert Ernst, Ulrike Helzel, Jason Bridges, Michael Roider, James Kryshak, Benedikt Kobel, Ryan Speedo Green, Dan Paul Dumitrescu, Clemens Unterreiner, Alfred Šramek, Il Hong, Jens Musger, Daniel Lökös
Wiener Staatsoper Live at Home - 23 January 2015
It's strange to think that in a way it was Oscar Wilde who would be the inspiration that would change the face of music in the 20th century. Strange too to think that it would be a work like 'Salome', a play written in French in all of Wilde's purple poetry, although the play had already caused scandal and been banned for its decidedly unsavoury treatment of a Biblical subject. Richard Strauss' opera is a direct response to the lurid suggestion of the play and was subject to similar criticism and banning, but the most notable aspect of Salome is its revolutionary musical language.
Faithfully adapted, almost intact from a German translation of the work, it's the tone of the play itself that determines the nature and the gestures of the musical score for Richard Strauss' Salome. Salome doesn't go quite as far as the composer's subsequent opera Elektra in pushing the boundaries of tonality, but some of its discordance does lead the way towards modernism, serialism and atonality as a means of dramatic expression in opera, and in modern music in general. There would of course be other social upheavals after the war and composers like Schoenberg and Berg (both in the audience at Salome's 1906 Austrian premiere) who would take musical experiments much further after Strauss abandoned this direction.
To suggest that the music is merely a direct response to the subject is however to undervalue the insight and input of Richard Strauss. Another composer, Antoine Mariotte, composed an opera version of Salomé around the same time as Strauss (unfortunately neglecting to obtain the rights first), and the suggestive power of Wilde's play is evident in the extent that it influences Mariotte's version too, but comparison of the two works allows us to see just how vital the application of Strauss' personal sensibility and his ability as a composer was on the actual musical direction that his opera would take. There's little evidence of the composer's individuality coming through in the Wagnerian models followed in Guntram and Feuersnot, but in Salome Strauss finds a revolutionary new application for his tone poems.
The application of those vast forces of lush Wagnerian Romantic orchestration to the poetic language of Salome creates a striking and jarring effect. Trying to find a musical equivalent to the text's opposition of cruel sentiments wrapped up in florid, decadent imagery, Strauss comes up with an extraordinary sound that has little precedent, or at least not to this extent of expression. It is a genuine response to the text, not one that is purely illustrative or acting merely as a musical accompaniment, but music that seemingly plunges into the dark places that those sentiments arise from. Straight through, in one act, with nothing to break the intensity of the dramatic tension.
The nature of the subject doesn't just determine the approach of the music, but it also defines the dramatic presentation. When the libretto and the music is as expressionistic as this, it doesn't really need any more symbolism or stage effects. Strauss didn't feel the need to elaborate on the text of the play as much as explore and exploit its remarkable mood and setting, and it's useful if a production remains within those parameters too. There's not a whole lot to be gained from adding to the simplicity and sheer power of the work as it stands. Boleslaw Barlog's production for Vienna adheres closely enough to those requirements, allowing the work to express itself through the singing and musical interpretation.
The costumes and the period evoke the Biblical setting, by way perhaps of Gustav Klimt, which isn't entirely inappropriate to the fin-de-siècle philosophical and artistic origins of this work. With no harsh angles, the balcony leads down in curves to the pit that contains Jokanaan, John the Baptist. The colours are bold, lurid, with swirling patterns and costumes that trail off in circles. Having set the mood and given it an appropriate tone and colouration that suits the work, the stage directions scarcely deviate from the dramatic action. The direction itself focusses mainly on exploring and bringing out the characterisation of these monstrous figures as they are drawn in Wilde's play, and in Strauss' musical interpretation of them.
Principally that falls on Catherine Naglestad as Salome. Her voice has the right kind of Wagnerian firmness, but also much of the lyrical Straussian manner that is required as well. This allows her to switch between alluring persuasion and harsh imprecation, her cool hard timbre better suited to the latter admittedly, but she's strong right across the whole range. Tomasz Konieczny was a reliable Jokanaan, but not one that made a major impression in this production. Herod and Heriodias were however wonderfully sung and characterised. Herwig Pecoraro got across perfectly how Herod's weak-nature and nervous superstition is overcome only by the greater force of his lecherousness. The fearsome Herodias must also be placated however, and in that respect Elisabeth Kulman was formidable, never over-playing, terrorising with the tone and delivery of her pronouncements alone.
The Wiener Staatsoper's Live at Home in HD season continues in February with broadcasts of SIMON BOCCANEGRA, TOSCA, ANDREA CHÉNIER, DON CARLO and an EDITA GRUBEROVA gala concert. Details of how to view these productions in the links below.
Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live Streaming programme; Staatsoper Live at Home video
