o terrible night
by
Douglas Messerli
Oscar
Wilde (as translated by Hedwig Lachmann, libretto), Richard Strauss Salome / LAOpera, Dorothy Chandler
Pavilion / the performance Howard Fox and I saw was the matinee performance on
March 19, 2017, the opera’s last performance
The
last time I saw a production of Richard Strauss’ wonderful Salome was in October 2008, an HD live showing of the Met
production with the fabulous Karita Mattila (see My Year 2002: Love, Death, and Transfiguration). I wrote highly of
that production, yet pointing out that Mattila’s “Dance of the Seven Veils,”
given her girth, was a bit troublesome, and the final barring of her breasts
was cut from the theater-goers vision.
All in this production’s cast members
were quite excellent, but one must give particular kudos to Issachah Savage as
Narbaboth, Tómas Tómasson, as the cistern- jailed Nochanaan, and Allan
Glassman, as Herod. Gabriele Schnaut, when we could hear her voice in the first
balcony, seemed equally talented, but that was the problem with much of the
other singing; as director James Conlon joked in the preview conversation with
the audience, you will be able to hear the singers 90% of the time!
But what was lost in the singing, was
certainly made up for in the acting and in the beautiful abstract set by John
Bury (and here being in the balcony was an advantage, since we could quite
clearly see the stunningly tiled floor, presumably on the upper roof of Herod’s
villa).
Racette, performing her notorious dance
with four male dancers, was able to make the event a truly spectacular and
sexual experience, the leering Herod lounging on pillows while he lusts have
his wife’s daughter.
This year I have chosen the notion of barbarians
at the gate to be at the center of my studies; and there is no better example
of this than Wilde’s and Strauss’ opera of 1905. Although the people of Herod’s
court are terrified of the outside, of the Jewish community
living outside
its gates and, even more so, of the new Messiah wandering throughout the
land—each of the characters at one time or another, declare that they are
fearful that something terrible will happen during this very evening—which is
why, in part, they have arrested John the Baptist, Jochanaan. We soon learn,
however, that the terrible thing that will happen this evening will come from
inside, through the hands of all of Herod’s court, and not from outside.
Ignorance, sexual obsession, pride, and power all emanate from and gather
around these figures to bring their world to an end. Even the crude and lustful
Herod, ultimately, cannot abide the world he has helped to create, and orders
the beautiful young girl with which he is so enchanted, to be killed, in so
doing, not so very differently from Wagner’s Wotan, declaring his own
destruction as well.
Los Angeles,
March 20, 2017
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