Oscar Wilde's pseudo-biblical shocker, gaudy, decadent, vulgar, is an overwhelming experience. So too is Richard Strauss’s opera. The lush, dramatic and erotic score, awash in its multiple orgasms, builds to a hysterical, disgusting climax in which Salome dementedly kisses the mouth of Jochanaan’s decapitated head.
The play was banned in England in 1892 and did not get a public showing in London’s West End (as opposed to private club performances) until 1931.
Critics at the opera’s première in Dresden in 1905 dismissed it as immoral and cacophonous, degrading to composer and audience alike, declaring it was ideal entertainment for homosexuals, lesbians, masochists and sadists.
The present production, conducted by Alejo Pérez and directed by Erjan Mondtag who also designed the set and costumes, has fine performances. Allison Cook as Salome is no teenager but a scarlet woman, a powerhouse in her vocally arduous final scene, one of the most demanding ever written.
Thomas Blondelle has a great aria when Herod, played as a George Grosz caricature, pleads with Salome to change her mind and ask for anything but the head of Jochanaan. Michael Kupfer-Radecky is impressive vocally and physically as Jochanaan. In loincloth and dressing gown, he stalks the stage in Salome’s imagination.
The revolving set, alternating between the outer dark and smoky battlements of Herod’s palace and an inner ostentatious banquet hall, gives the production momentum. The guards, in rubbery uniforms and carrying machine guns, look unconvincing and comic. Some characters have strange science-fiction coned heads. Worse still is when members of the cast take off their costumes and reveal revolting naked body suits.
The famous "Dance of the Seven Veils" is not in the Bible. It is a Wilde invention. Wilde thought Salome should be totally naked and draped in necklaces. Strauss wanted the dance to be serious, decent, aristocratic and stylish. Here it is danced by Salome and four chorus girls in naked body stockings The choreography is the sort of crude kitsch you would find in 1920s Berlin cabaret.
Vlaanderen’s Salome can be watched free on the OperaVision channel.