Review: Trauma in Two Nights, as SALOME follows TURANDOT to the Analyst's Couch in Vienna

I couldn’t help but wondering whether the scheduling last week of two recent productions at the Vienna State Opera, Claus Guth’s TURANDOT and Cyril Teste’s SALOME, on subsequent nights had anything more than the availability of the stars behind it.

After all, both portrayed the title characters as abused women scarred by powerful men—not exactly the business-as-usual for these works by Puccini and Strauss, respectively—in pared-down productions that hearkened to the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, as well as to #MeToo.

I’ve already discussed the TURANDOT (see separate review), so now it’s time for SALOME, based on a play by Oscar Wilde and famous for her Dance of the Seven Veils. With Strauss’s earthy score played by the Vienna Philharmonic in fine form under Philippe Jordan, and a fine cast to pull it off, this SALOME covers its distasteful subject neatly and precisely, without ever losing its impact. (Strauss used a German translation of Wilde’s play, which had been written in French.)

This time around, in a vaguely modern setting from designer Celine Gaudier with Julien Boizard’s lighting, we’re at a dinner party celebrating the birthday of Salome’s stepfather, the Tetrarch Herod (in an eerily repulsive performance by tenor Gerhard Siegel). A video camera, handled neatly by Remy Nguyen under Mehdi Toutain-Lopez’s direction, closes in on the guests, including the leering, preening Herod who lusts for Salome and the girl’s mother, the evil Herodias (in a go-for-broke performance by mezzo Michaela Schuster), who had been married to Herod’s brother.

Most critically, this is the Salome known for asking Herod for the head of John the Baptist, known here as Jochanaan (the chilly, disdaining baritone of Iain Paterson), who is held captive in a cistern. Salome has become obsessed with him and when her stepfather asked her to dance for him (“tanz fur mich”), no less than the prisoner’s kopf on a platter will do as payment for her performance. (Though in this version, the head looks more like a face that would be fodder for Hannibal Lecter.)

Even he is repulsed and refuses. Salome connives to get his chief guard Narraboth (the game tenor Daniel Jenz) to bring it to her anyway. It takes little convincing before he accedes to her request.

Actually, this is a performance that has a trio of Salomes, dressed identically in white by designer Marie La Rocca, all of whom played their part in the version of the story conceived by director Teste.

Most importantly is the singing of soprano Camilla Nylund, a performer of exciting vocal resources, as the adult version. (I last heard her thrill audiences in excerpts from TRISTAN UND ISOLDE opposite Jonas Kaufmann with the Boston Symphony at Carnegie Hall.)

While it took her a while to warm up, once she did, we were inundated by her voice. She was almost startling in her intensity and repulsive in her interactions with the head of the prophet, which she handles and finally kisses. This is too much, even for Herod, and he orders her death.

The other Salomes? Memories of her youth: one the abused child (ballerina Jana Radda) who does most of the frenzied dancing choreographed by Magdalena Chowaniec, the other (Margaryta Lazniuk) a dream of what she might have been if she had not fallen into Herod’s hands. They were both quite satisfying, each in her own way.

Anyone who’s ever heard SALOME knows there’s plenty of ferocity in Richard Strauss’s score—enough to put off singers and opera companies from taking it on, in and around its premiere in Dresden in 1905.  (Though it was soon performed in 50 other opera houses.) I thought the music sounded somewhat less scary here than is often the case, but the performance under Jordan nonetheless left the audience screaming its approval.

Caption: Jana Radda and Camillia Nylund

Credit: (c) Michael Poehn, (c) Wiener Staatsoper

SALOME will be heard with this cast at the Vienna State Opera through June 17 and through next April with other singers. For more information, please see the English language version of the Vienna State Opera’s website.

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