Salome

Richard Strauss Salome opera to a libretto from Hedwig Lachmann's German translation of Oscar Wilde's play Salome. Directed 2008 by David McVicar at Royal Opera House. Stars Nadja Michael, Michaela Schuster, Thomas Moser, Michael Volle, Joseph Kaiser, Daniela Sindram, Christian Sist, Alan Ewing, Vuyani Mlinde, Pumeza Matshikiza, Adrian Thompson, Martyn Hill, Hubert Francis, Ji-Min Park, Jeremy White, Iain Paterson, Julian Tovey, Duncan Meadows, Kenneth Bryars, Andrew Carter, Peter Cooney, Trevor Goldstein, Sam Guttman Hancocks, Irene Hardy, Nathan T Heys, Pano Masti, Lee Mathieson, Frances Milar, Emma Reed, Anna-Marie Sullivan, and Sirena Tocco. Philippe Jordan conducts The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House (Associate Concert Master Sergey Levitin). Designs by Es Devlin; lighting by Wolfgang Göbbel; choreography by Andrew George; video designs by Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer; filming directed by Jonathan Haswell. Released 2010, disc has 5.1 dts Master Audio. Grade: A

I sometimes say the history of opera can be divided in 4 periods: The Early Age, The Age of Aria, The Age of Orchestration, and the Age of Experimentation. If this holds any water, then Salome (from 1905) is an "important" opera in that it is a prominent marker for the beginning of the The Age of Orchestration. Because it depicts incest, child abuse, juvenile sexual depravity, murderous brutality, necrophilia, and cannibalism, it has always been probably the most controversial of operas in the canon. It takes great singing and acting, a superb orchestra, and taut directing to keep Salome under control. In this production, McVicars was able to put it all together.

We start with our Salome, the stupendous soprano Nadja Michael. Nadja was born in then East Germany. As a child, she was a swimmer in the infamous East German sports system! When the coaches wanted to give her steroids, her parents pulled her out, and she eventually escaped to the West. She has apparently always been a fitness nut---at about age 37 (in 2008) she was rail thin, flexible and mobile physically, looked like age 27, and able to portray a girl of 17 (more or less). Though small and lithe, she can sing accurately over the 116-piece Straussian band. Further, she can act with big gestures to the live audience and small-scale facial expressions and moves that make her terrifying in high-definition close-up shots. McVicar holds nothing back in taking advantage of this. There is a silver platter. But most of the time Nadja fondles and cuddles John's head like her rag doll. The head was designed to bleed for 10 minutes; by the end of the show, Nadja is all but drenched in red. This fully sets the scene for Herodes to say to his wife in ominous voice-over (on the screen), "Sie ist ein Ungeheure, deine Tochter. (She is a monster, your daughter.)"

The horror show is coming to an end, and the nasty girl must die. In this production, the naked executioner breaks her neck. Thomas Moser realistically portrays Herod in combining the swagger of a tyrant with the nervousness of one who has keen insight into his own weaknesses. Michaela Schuster is utterly disgusting as Herodias. Michael Volle sings beautifully as Jokanaan (he does not look emaciated, however, as required by the libretto). All the supporting singers are excellent. The orchestra plays as if they were afraid Philippe Jordan might throw them into the cistern.

All technical aspects of this disc are fully satisfactory. McVicar moved the setting of Salome from Biblical times to the time between WW I and the end of WW II. Instead of foremen and slaves, policemen and inmates (three nude) from prisons serve Herod. This 1940 look is apt since Salomeic atavistic depravity was a hallmark of the police states of that time in both Western and Eastern Europe.

This brings us to the famous dance by Salome that pleased Herod. According to reports on the Internet, Nadja Michael is, in addition to all her other glories, also an excellent dancer. So observers were expecting something pretty salacious from McVicar. No way. In this show, Salome puts on more clothes than she takes off, only dances a (rather elegant) little waltz with Herod, and otherwise thrashes about like a patient in a padded cell (which is where she should have been). At the end of the dance, Herod declares it wonderful. All this suggests that Herod was a more complicated man than your typical sex-crazed dictator. H'mm---come to think of it, maybe dictators are usually more interested in other things than sex. By the time they got into power, no matter what horrors were unfolding in their domains, both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were personally quite squeamish---and so is McVicar's Herod.

At this point, I would like to praise another excellent feature of this Opus Arte disc--- the German language subtitles. For Strauss, the orchestra was the star. The singers had to swim or sink. The German libretto to Salome is straight-forward German prose that is easy for me understand as written text. But trying to make out where the singers are in the libretto during performance is dauntingly difficult. 35 years ago, in a determined effort to learn Salome, I bought the Brigit Nilsson version with Georg Solti and the Vienne Philharmonic on London LPs. Included in the set was a beautiful full libretto in German and English. Alas. I could never follow the libretto from the recording, and I gave up. Now when it comes to getting both the orchestra and the singers on record, the Opus Arte HDVD is vastly superior to my LPs. This improvement is independent from the tremendous help you get in understanding the singing from seeing the action in the video. After watching the Opus Arte dics 4 times, I now can follow every word of the singing in real time, if I have the German subtitles on. When I have the German subtitles off, I can follow about half the words. To master the libretto without the German sub-titles, I would have to memorize it, which I do not have time to do. So I am grateful to Opus Arte for the care they give in producing their products, including the provision of subtitles in the language being sung on the disc. This is a hugely important factor in helping consumers take full advantage of the fabulous works Opus Art is providing us in HDVD. (The last thing I did was to go back to the LPs again---I still can hardly understand a word.)

Time to sum up: this is an A+ title for any serious opera student or Strauss fan and it sets the limbo stick pretty low for future competition. Because of the nudity and bloody horror shown, I'm not sure how broad the appeal of this will be, so I give it a "A" grade on our Alphalist.