Strauss - Salome

ONP Bastille, Thursday October 27, 2022

Conductor: Simone Young. Production: Lydia Steier. Sets and video: Momme Hinrichs. Costumes: Andy Besuch. Lighting: Olaf Freese. Salome: Elza van den Heever. Herodes: John Daszak. Herodias: Karita Mattila. Jochanaan: Iain Paterson. Narraboth: Tansel Akzeybek. Page der Herodias: Katharina Magiera. Erster Jude: Matthäus Schmidlechner. Zweiter Jude: Éric Huchet. Dritter Jude: Maciej Kwaśnikowski. Vierter Jude: Mathias Vidal. Fünfter Jude: Sava Vemić. Erster Nazarener: Luke Stoker. Zweiter Nazarener: Yiorgo Ioannou. Erster Soldat: Dominic Barberi. Zweiter Soldat: Bastian Thomas Kohl. Cappadocier: Alejandro Baliñas Vieites. Ein Sklave: Marion Grange. Orchestra of the Opéra National de Paris.

Photos: Agathe Poupeney/ONP

My new season opened with two Strauss works: Der Rosenkavalier in Brussels on Sunday, and before that, this new production of Salome.

The ONP seemed determined to court scandal (or do I just mean excite interest?) by issuing warnings about it, first, to the press, then on its website, proclaiming: 'Certain explicit scenes of a violent and sexual nature may upset sensitive audiences' in red type. In the event, I came away disappointed - sur ma faim, as we say here - by the curious mismatch between an exaggeratedly nasty, sordid production and a largely lukewarm musical performance, summed up neatly at the head of Diapason's review (machine translated):

'Piling on obscene gestures and attitudes, Lydia Steier's extremist spectacle falls into the trap of what it claims to denounce: the outrages of a depraved society. Simone Young's musical direction is only half convincing, but Elza van den Heever triumphs in the title role.'

The production is relentlessly sleazy (it's orgy, orgy all the time with her, I thought, recalling Under Milk Wood), without really offering much new or doing sleaze as creepily as the likes of Warlikowski. It's set in a corner of a stiflingly grim, grey, green greasy courtyard, at an angle, with one long high wall running from the left to join a shorter one to the right, and a corner of the stone flags, in the middle of which is the cistern, overhanging the pit (the orchestra pit; a steaming pit for disposing of bodies, with a sprinkling of lime, is located to the left of the stone flagging). A narrow staircase scales the right-hand wall to the shabby royal apartments we can see through a large picture window.

Three extras, on the right, wear grimy, unpleasantly rubbery-looking, yellow gas-proof PPE from head to toe; the guards are in full black riot gear, complete with gas masks they remove to sing. An elaborately choreographed, slow-motion orgy can be seen ad infinitum (or ad nauseam) through the picture window, with the royal couple and their motley, many-gendered guests in freakish Rocky-Horror-meets-bondage-Lacroix costumes: swathes of satin and silk brocades in old-master colours, extravagant wigs, torn black lace, fishnet with gaping holes, 'Goth' boots with steel trimmings, and so on, of a kind we've been familiar with in opera since the 80s. The Jews are got up in velvet-trimmed suits: five Oscar Wildes, puffing cigars.

Salome thus stands out starkly in a white coat fastened tightly to the neck, long, straight, jet-black hair, silvery tights and chunky work boots. Stolid and statuesque, hands in pockets when not lighting and smoking cigarettes, nearly expressionless, she's portrayed - as the director said herself in an interview - more as an Elektra, monolithic and intractable, than a Chrysothemis. After her entry, while she circles the cistern, intrigued, near-naked victims are dragged up the stairs to the perpetual party, one after another, to be abused, killed and dismembered, dragged down again in bloody sheets and disposed of, by the extras in yellow, in the steaming pit.

Jochanaan pops up fairly conventionally in his cage for his first 'Salvation Army'* rant, but curiously, in an unexpected moment of fantasy during Salome's three-phase seduction attempt, the guards and extras in PPE waltz together in the darkness. During the orchestral passage after the curse, Salome, lying atop the cistern, masturbates vigorously to a climax.

(Sorry, I'm making terribly heavy weather of all this. I'll try to speed up).

The 'tanz' in 'tanz für Mich' is, as you might expect having read this far, a euphemism. Herod strips Salome to her slip, sniffing her knickers before throwing them to the assembled courtiers (the rear wall having opened up to let them out via a broad staircase); she sits astride him to give herself up, and as the music accelerates, the whole crazed court joins in: a gang rape instead of the dance, that seems to go on forever. Salome emerges covered in blood, to get her way. But, unexpectedly, the grim and grisly production ends (rather like Brünnhilde 'going to pieces' after the kiss in Anna Russell's comic potted Ring), not just with Salome kissing John's lips, but with a sort of apotheosis or redemption through love: while the page, upstairs, massacres the whole court, King and Queen and all, spattering the windows with gore, a double of Salome crawls in agony across the floor, as she and John rise slowly, locked in embrace in his cage, to the sky.

So there were definitely some ideas, not all new, but I didn't get any sense of an overarching vision holding things together coherently.

The occasional unruliness of John Daszak's voice, not always on the note, was of no account in his vivid portrayal of a decadent, neurotic maniac. Karita Mattila, meanwhile, appeared to be having the time of her life playing his equally decadent wife with equal commitment, leering joyfully as the handsome guard tugs at the nipple rings in her ample false breasts, his reward from her being the ring Herod could no longer find at the end. This more than made up, dramatically, for the shocking (to anyone who admires her), woolly-timbred state her voice is now in. I wondered if people up the back could hear her, let alone follow the words. Iain Paterson's Jochanaan, Salvation Army notwithstanding, offered some thrills thanks to Strauss's score, but was a little underpowered. Some of the supporting cast were excellent: Tansel Akzeybek's bright Narraboth, Katharina Magiera's ample page, and it was intriguing to find the likes of Eric Huchet and Mathias Vidal among the Jews.

Elza van den Heever's Salome was a picture of youthful vocal health. She has the resources, and more, to sing every note Strauss throws at her with apparently little effort and with remarkable dynamic range and variety, from mezza voce wheedling to a triumphant full throttle. The famous final scene offered its thrills as well. But if I came away less satisfied than I hoped, I think the problem came from the pit. Simone Young's conducting was detailed and respectful (according to van den Heever, this is Young's favourite opera), but to me rather plain and dull and dutiful, never letting rip in torrents of either joy or horror, never stretching the orchestra to its limits - far from it. An oddly placid musical accompaniment to such a violent, trashy production, and thus one that, as I said, left me sur ma faim.

*In Ronald Firbank's Vainglory:

'For lack of humour, 'Winsome said, 'I know of nothing in the world to compare with the Prophet's music in Salome. It's the quintessence of villadom. It suggests the Salvation Army, and General Booth. It ---'

'You don't like it?' she interrupted him. 

 'Not very much.'