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Austria R. Strauss, Salome: Soloists, Vienna State Opera Orchestra / Philippe Jordan (conductor). Vienna State Opera, Vienna, 4.2.2023. (MB)
Production:
Director – Cyril Teste
Artistic collaboration – Céline Gautier
Designs – Valérie Grall
Costumes – Marie La Rocca
Lighting – Julien Boizard
Video design – Mehdi Toutain-Lopez
Video design (dwell digicam) – Rémy Nguyen
Choreography – Magdalena Chowaniec
Dramaturgy – Sergio Morabito
Cast:
Herod – Gerhard Siegel
Herodias – Michaela Schüster
Salome – Malin Byström
Jochanaan – Wolfgang Koch
Narraboth – Daniel Jenz
Page – Patricia Nolz
Jews – Thomas Ebenstein, Andrea Giovannini, Carlos Osuna, Katleho Mokhoabane, Evgeny Solodovnikov
Nazarenes – Clemens Unterreiner, Attila Mokus
Soldiers – Ilja Kazakov, Stephano Park
Cappadocian – Alejandro Pizarro-Enríquez
Slave – Daniel Lökös
Executioner – Alexandre Cardoso da Silva
Cameraman – Benedikt Missmann
Little Salome – Margaryta Lazniuk
Little Salome (Dance/Video) – Anna Chesnova
At final, a brand new Salome involves Vienna, Boleslaw Barlog’s venerable (1972!) staging lastly having been retired. Cyril Teste’s new manufacturing has a lot to advocate it, each in itself and as realised by forged and orchestra. At first sight, all is as one may count on from a recent staging. Herod’s courtroom has a mixture of fashionable(ish) civilian night costume and navy uniforms. Guests are seated at an extended desk and champagne flows. We see them not above, as in David McVicar’s long-running Covent Garden manufacturing, however behind. But we see better element by means of dwell video. Herod’s leering obsession with Salome is already obvious. A state banquet is the setting, however the tragedy for Teste is familial; in a programme interview, he sees parallels with Hamlet. I’m not certain I see it that approach, actually. The aestheticism of each Wilde and Strauss appears, no less than in Teste’s spoken define, considerably shortchanged. In follow, although – and that is absolutely extra necessary – the manufacturing is open sufficient to permit one to method it from one’s personal standpoint and never really feel disenchanted, fairly the opposite.
There is commendable consideration to atmospheric element, contributing significantly to a extra detailed complete. Curtain motion chillingly – in multiple sense – conveys the sinister night wind. More essentially, the element of camerawork not solely brings to life extra that is happening, multiple can fairly absorb on a single viewing, but in addition allows Herod’s pornographic intent to disclose itself. For this Salome will not be solely a household tragedy; it’s a tragedy of an abused lady/younger lady. Salome’s dance is carefully filmed, cut up between her and a reminiscence of her nonetheless youthful self. Initially components of it appear odd, bizarrely awkward, as when she flexes her muscle tissues, however one realises that’s the level. Salome is each too figuring out and never figuring out sufficient; part of her is shockingly, even heartbreakingly, harmless. And but we should watch. Even the Tetrarch finds it not possible to look at a few of it, head in palms towards the aspect of the stage, although that doesn’t subtract from his glee at its shut. He would most likely desire a non-public viewing. Aestheticism, then, comes right here in any case; we must always at all times beware rulers who additionally suppose themselves artists.
I’m (almost) at all times shocked how most productions put fully to at least one aspect Salome’s express reference to homosexuality; it’s not even a subtext, however a textual content, Salome promising Narraboth a inexperienced flower if he’ll do her bidding. In my expertise, solely Hans Neuenfels’s good Berlin staging has taken the opera at its phrase right here (assuming we don’t depend David McVicar’s gratuitous nude executioner). The manufacturing definitely doesn’t lack different sexual content material, although, culminating in a gripping collision between Salome, the executioner, and the top of John the Baptist he has introduced up from the cistern employed as a masks. Ultimately the executioner, at Herodias’s bidding, withdraws, however not earlier than he too has had his piece of the lady. Moreover, the now frequent portrayal of Herodias’s web page, sung by a feminine voice but unquestionably a male position, as an androgynous lady poses, or no less than suggests, additional questions of gender, even because it takes us farther from Wilde’s inexperienced carnation.
This would depend for comparatively little, have been it not for a number of excellent performances onstage. Malin Byström totally inhabited the title position from starting to finish, in as positive a efficiency as one might hope to see and hear. Gerhard Siegel didn’t mistake grotesquerie of behaviour for a licence to not sing. His Herod was all of the extra believable, in addition to all of the creepier and extra sinister, for its vocal qualities. Michaela Schüster was absolutely destined for Herodias, her portrayal effortlessly iconic – for as soon as, the much-abused phrase appears becoming – in its small observations as in its easy hauteur. Ultimately, rule is hers, no less than till eclipsed all too briefly by her daughter. Wolfgang Koch’s Jochanaan is a usually clever portrayal: essentially direct in its prophecy, but delicate in its interaction of phrases and music. The best Narraboths at all times go away one wishing for extra, that the officer’s tragedy is likely to be averted. Daniel Jenz was no exception, his Narraboth sweetly sung, imploring and bewitched. Cast from seemingly limitless depth, this Salome had everybody, nonetheless small the position, contribute to a better complete. For me, the 2 Nazarenes, Clemens Unterreiner and Attila Mokus, particularly caught the ear, however it might properly have been others—and absolutely was for others within the viewers.
The Vienna State Opera Orchestra was on glorious type too, filled with wealthy, heat tone wherein to luxuriate, but ever exact and directed. It might not be fairly the interval instrument right here, Salome having reached the home as late as 13 years after its 1905 Dresden premiere; one may nonetheless have been forgiven for considering so. That precision owed a lot, in fact, to Philippe Jordan’s considerate conducting. If this weren’t a Salome on which he stamped an indelibly private mark – one may suppose right here of, say, Karajan’s Salome – that was absolutely not Jordan’s intention. In allowing the rating, after the mandatory cliché (and phantasm), to talk for itself, he was much less impartial than conscious of the actual necessities of the stage.
Mark Berry