McVicar's heroine inspires loathing and lust in a brutally explicit production
Salome Royal Opera House, London WC2
"Contains nudity and violence", cautioned the publicity material for Covent Garden's new production of Salome, rather proudly. As it happens, although the opera's central tableau is basically an extended striptease, the supply of naked flesh here was relatively short. There was, however, plenty of blood, so thrill-seekers in the audience didn't feel short-changed.
The real violence in Salome is of the emotional kind. The central character is a psychotic enfant terrible who famously reveals the depth of her depravity by making love to the severed head of Jokanaan (John the Baptist). But Richard Strauss's opera often prompts contradictory feelings of awe, disgust, love and pity; so much so, that the experience of watching it can be quite overwhelming. Despite everything, it is pity that we eventually feel for the work's demonic heroine.
Salome is the daughter of a debauched, dehumanised society. The decadence of her stepfather Herod's palace is a facade, concealing the network of fear and self-obsession that governs his realm. She is not, on the face of it, a sympathetic character, but the magic of Strauss's dramatisation is that she can become very powerfully so. The great virtue of this production by David McVicar was that everything worked confidently towards the dramatic paradox of our combined disgust and love for Salome.
The drama is set in the palace courtyard, reimagined here as a dirty, white-tiled cellar. When Salome first enters, eager to escape her stepfather's lusting gaze, she comments on the freshness of the air - a nice irony, as the cellar is where prisoners are guarded, banquets prepared, and prostitutes wiped down and drugged up before being pushed back upstairs to work.
Above the cellar, we glimpsed a banquet in progress - bejewelled guests feasting on flesh, both living and cooked, in a dining room where the art-nouveau wallpaper had a florally embellished head of John the Baptist as its principal emblem.
The production's bravest conceit lay in McVicar's interpretation of Salome's "Dance of the Seven Veils" as a stripping away of not her clothing, but her personality. Each "veil" became a room in which the bare essentials of her loveless childhood were presented. The princess passed through with her sycophantic stepfather in tow, the pair snatching the occasional twirl as they went. The sequence may not have been to everybody's taste, but it did help arouse our sympathy for Salome, who was presented as an amoral basket case, rather than an immoral coquette.
However, it is always the orchestra and the soprano playing Salome that must work hardest to win over the audience. The young Swiss conductor Philippe Jordan, soon to take the reins at the Opéra National de Paris, proved himself a trustworthy guide. Strauss's protean score, which writhes, twists and mutates at every turn, can seem overindulgent if not handled with the necessary restraint. Under Jordan, the orchestra seemed relaxed and in control.
On stage, some excellent performances provided exemplary support for the German soprano Nadja Michael's Salome. In particular Robin Leggate, a Covent Garden stalwart, replacing an indisposed Thomas Moser as Herod, gave an intelligent interpretation of this difficult role. Michael was a mezzo-soprano until three years ago, and has a raw, rough-edged lower register beneath her polished, ethereal head voice. She wonderfully conveyed Salome's terrible beauty as her character consumed itself in confused desire.
Only Jokanaan, sung by the baritone Michael Volle - who with his bedraggled hair, long coat and bare chest resembled a rock star the morning after a particularly hard day's night - could provide a dramatic counterbalance to Salome. Salome's longing for Jokanaan stems from the fact that she, entirely devoid of a moral compass, mistakes the salvation she glimpses in him for an irresistibly powerful erotic desire.
This Freudian substitution is tricky to put across on stage, and frequently Strauss's intention has been misunderstood because of it. But with two singer-actors of the quality and dedication of Michael and Volle, and direction not far short of impeccable, the effect of the critical scene of atrophying aestheticism was exceptionally powerful. And chastening, very chastening indeed.
Pick of the week
The Magic Flute – Impempe Yomlingo
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Mozart’s tale, set perfectly to South African rhythms and to spirituals.
Eugene Onegin
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Tchaikovsky’s score to Pushkin’s verse revisited in a rare production.
St Matthew Passion
21 March, Barbican Hall, London EC2
Bach’s Mass, performed by the superb London Symphony Chorus.
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