A different type of scandal
Goes to see a low-key by Opera North that might shock the #MeToo generation
Those among you sick to death of finding their opera served up half-baked or overcooked by pretentious directors should take heart from this refreshingly unadulterated production of Strauss’s Salome.
It comes from Opera North, which with its customary inventiveness has made a virtue of the limitations of its home at the Grand Theatre in Leeds. Because this venue isn’t up to accommodating a huge symphony orchestra, the company decamps to the city’s opulently Victorian Town Hall when impelled to tackle largescale repertory such as the Ring cycle, Elektra or Turandot.
And instead of attempting to mount fully designed stagings, it uses lighting effects, basic props and neutral costuming to indicate the drama, trusting in the text and score and the acting skills of the performers to do the rest. The result has been highly successful, allowing the opera to communicate its truth untrammeled, and the concept is now being exported to other halls. Money saved on decoration is an obvious incidental benefit.
Based on a play by Oscar Wilde, Salome has continued to scandalise since its Dresden premiere in 1905, and was banned in England until 1907 (it eventually premiered in London in 1910, in modified form). Our grandfathers shuddered at its blasphemous riff on a biblical episode; our grandmothers winced at its aggressive sadism and tortured eroticism. Perhaps what strikes us most unsettlingly today is that it depicts unambiguously a corrupt teenage girl initiating the seduction of a virtuous grown man reduced to the status of a powerless victim: the idea of a woman as a culpable sexual aggressor is not something the #MeToo generation wants to hear about.
But Opera North’s excellent cast doesn’t labour the point. There is no severed head on a platter, and Salome sits out the titillating Dance of the Seven Veils, leaving its striptease as a purely orchestral affair. The singers wear varieties of sober black-andwhite evening dress, with only Salome herself in more colourful couture. Yet at every moment the audience is palpably gripped by the gruesome tale of a spoilt child exploiting her infatuated stepfather and the music that sumptuously illustrates it.
Jennifer Holloway, an American mezzo-soprano who made her mark in Norma at ENO, has previously sung the title-role in Germany and seems fully in command of its vocal challenges. Although her timbre may not be distinctive nor her diction crystalline, she hits the notes squarely and phrases sensitively, inhabiting the character with an energy that aptly suggests implacable obstinacy.
The object of her desire is Robert Hayward’s equally stubborn Jokanaan, sung and acted straight from the gut. Herod and Herodias are played by Arnold Bezuyen and Katarina Karnéus, both also the better for the absence of any superfluous histrionics, while the promising young tenor Oliver Johnston sings with honeyed sweetness as Narraboth.
The project was originally intended as a showcase for the conducting talent of Opera North’s former music director Aleksandar Markovic, an enthusiastic Straussian who made a sudden departure from Britain last year. To replace him on the podium comes the trim and slight 75-year-old figure of Sir Richard Armstrong, a seasoned interpreter of this score from his days leading Scottish Opera and Welsh National Opera.
Some conductors are content to make this musical salamander writhe and glitter, relishing the exotic instrumentation and slithering harmonies, but Armstrong is not one of them. He can certainly conjure up gorgeous sounds – the orchestra rendered the opening nocturnal scene with particular starlit beauty – but he knows that more than sensuality is needed if the opera is to sustain its unbroken hundred-minute span.
Always attentive to maintaining balance with the voices (never easy when the singers are placed behind rather than in front of you), Armstrong propels the score forcefully towards its hideously compelling climax – its violence left visually to our imagination but vividly realised in our ears. This is opera at its most nakedly potent.