“Salome” : LA Opera’s decadent delight
“Salome” – Ah, the madness!
Now, here’s an opera that doesn’t try and do too much, despite its many dysfunctional relationships and the way it encloses the viewer in an atmosphere of the exotic and the erotic. When Richard Strauss premiered “Salome” in 1905 it was unlike any opera the world had seen, the “Midnight Cowboy” of its time, although if people had been paying attention they’d have guessed it was coming, thanks to the painter Gustave Moreau, the novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans, and of course Oscar Wilde, whose 1892 play was morphed into the Strauss opera.
The fin-de-siècle was the heyday of Symbolist and Decadent art, a post-Romanticism blooming but with a darker tonality. But let’s get to the story itself, being revived yet again by LA Opera, conducted by James Conlin, and this time with Patricia Racette in the hot seat, that is to say, in the title role of the seductress.
The set is quite simple, with a misty, pastel-like backdrop, a few sketched-in trees, and a large anemic full moon that gradually drifts across the night sky. On stage, to our left, is a large cistern in which John the Baptist, or Jochanaan, as he’s called here, has been imprisoned.
The well is closely guarded, and we are immediately introduced to the young captain, Narraboth (Issachah Savage) and his attendant or page (Katarzyna Sadej, in a trouser role). Narraboth is infatuated with Salome, who is the daughter of the queen, Herodias (Gabriele Schnaut), and the stepdaughter of the king, actually tetrarch, Herod (Allan Glassman). Now, picture this, if you will: the page is smitten by Narraboth, Herod is smitten by Salome, Herodias is smitten by power, and Jochanaan (Tómas Tómasson) is only trying to keep his head above water, or at least above his neck, but he’ll need a biblical-sized miracle to make that happen.
There’s a party going on in the palace (maybe they’re watching the Oscars?), during which Salome wanders out, becomes curious about the contents of the cistern chapel, and then intrigued by the saint’s noble-sounding voice. She demands that he be brought to the surface so she can have a good look at him.
It’s a sultry night, the original 50 shades of grey, but soon the saint appears, with a bit of trouble adjusting to the light, such as it is. He’s a mess, dressed in rags, scraggy beard, tousled, unkempt hair, but Salome is mesmerized. She praises his white skin, then denounces it, praises his hair, then denounces it, and praises his lips, lips she desires to kiss. Meanwhile, apart from cursing her whore of a mother (he has his reasons), Jochanaan curses Salome as well.
Narraboth can’t bear to hear such trashy talk from the princess he adores, and after several feeble protestations he plunges his own dagger into his belly and falls down dead. No one notices, although later on a team of horses and 30 men are needed to drag his corpse from the stage. Well, not really, but Savage is quite a portly fellow, albeit with a fine, resonant voice.
The saint, with better things to do, returns to the bottom of the cistern.
Herod and Herodias make their grand entrance, both of them looking like they just stepped off the set of Fellini’s “Satyricon,” especially the plump Herodias who, if carved up, could probably feed a dozen starving Vikings, with leftovers for the morrow.
The queen admonishes her husband for always leering at Salome. He brushes aside her comments, and tries to entice the girl to come and sit beside him. No way, she replies. Then he commands her to dance for him. Nope, says Salome, nothing doing. I’ll sweeten the deal, Herod tells her, I’ll give you anything, anything, up to and including half my kingdom.
Sold! And so Salome does her infamous Dance of the Seven Veils.
Now, when “Salome” was first performed, the singer who portrayed her maybe swayed from side to side and threw a scarf to the floor, but not much more than that. As the 20th century progressed the Salomes removed more and more, and in Los Angeles (back in 1986) Maria Ewing, married at the time to the production’s Peter Hall, ended up with nary a stitch. I don’t think that’s become the norm, but it has set the bar rather high for all other Salomes. In other words, licentiousness may have been inherent from the start, but the opera didn’t or couldn’t embrace it until decades later.
Anyone who knows opera can see the problem right away. As with Cio-Cio-San in “Madama Butterfly,” how do you find a very young woman who looks like a Playboy model and can sing with the grace and the stamina that these roles require? James Conlon, the conductor, pointed it out during his pre-performance talk: It’s either the one or the other. Some of us, though, might even accept a deaf-mute for our Salome if she could convincingly portray a true seductress and femme fatale.
Patricia Racette, who initially is costumed in a light blue outfit that looks as if it was pulled from the wardrobe of “I Dream of Jeannie,” does a bit of prancing, running over here, now over there, unraveling a long veil or two, at which point I instructed my companion to wake me when she got down to business. But the “good part” wasn’t so good. As her last silks and satins fell to the floor, Racette stepped forward and stood facing the audience for a few seconds, but there was nothing alluring about this. Rather it was like, Here! This is what you’ve come for, right?
At that point, no. It didn’t seem she was dancing for Herod. Nor was the dance itself very convincing, not worth the 100 white peacocks Herod will soon try and get her to accept, and definitely not half of anyone’s kingdom. But other critics, locked as we are into today’s sociological climate, may assert that Salome is a woman in control, in charge, standing up for what she desires and unafraid to fling her sexuality in our faces. She’s doing this dance for herself, not for Herod.
Well, that’s one way to interpret the dance here in the early 21st century, but let’s not forget that Salome isn’t the middleclass girl next door.
The dance is over, Herod seems satisfied, and so he speaks up: Name your reward!
The head of John the Baptist! Herod is taken aback, caught off-guard. Anything having to do with Jochanaan should have been on a no-fly list, but it’s too late now. He tries to dissuade her, offering many other choices instead. But she’ll have none of it. Just the saint’s head, if you don’t mind. At last he gives in, and issues the command: Lop off that man’s head.
Moments later (in opera time) it’s handed to Salome on a silver platter. If it hadn’t occurred to us before, it’s pretty clear by now that Salome is bonkers, and one may thus compare her to Lucia di Lammermoor, that other magnificent crazy woman in opera.
But this is also where Patricia Racette shows that she’s the right woman for the job, and she shines lyrically in her macabre, trance-like, but poetic closing number. The intensity of the scene, musically and vocally, invites comparisons to Wagner’s “Liebestod,” which concludes the third act of “Tristan und Isolde.” And in this case worth the price of the opera.
Herod is disgusted. Kill that woman, he orders, and his guards rush in to do just that. There’s a dust cloud of instrumental notes, and the opera ends. Bravo. On opening night, however, as the soldiers drew their daggers, the blade from one of them went flying backwards and the poor fellow was left standing there brandishing a handle. I shouldn’t be mentioning this, because it’s an anomaly and won’t (cross your fingers) be happening again, but how often do you get a Marx Brothers moment at the crucial end of a Strauss opera?
“Elektra,” which followed three years later, is in the same vein, but then Strauss cleaned up his act, so to speak, and wrote works deemed more mature, such as “Der Rosenkavalier.” Well and good, but I’ve always had a soft spot for “Salome,” and there’s no end in sight where that’s concerned. Like a hothouse flower, it stands alone.
Salome is onstage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown Los Angeles in the Music Center. Additional performances: Thursday, March 2 at 7:30; Sunday, March 5 at 2:00; Thursday, March 16 at 7:30; and Sunday, March 19 at 2:00 p.m. Tickets, $19 to $329. Not recommended for children or the faint of heart. (213) 972-8001 or go to laopera.org. ER