United Kingdom Richard Strauss, Salome (live performance efficiency): Soloists, London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor). Barbican Corridor, London, 13.7.2025. (JPr)
It’s over thirty years since I first noticed Richard Strauss’s Salome at Covent Backyard in 1982 – with (now Dame) Josephine Barstow as Salome, Bernd Weikl as Jochanaan and (now Sir) John Tomlinson within the small function of as First Nazarene – I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the opera ever since; although maybe ‘hate’ is just too harsh, it’s extra of a love-so what? Nevertheless, I joined within the standing ovation within the Barbican Corridor on the finish of a blistering 100 minutes or so. I wasn’t even a reluctant standee, although I’d have been the one one round me who wasn’t on their ft had I been! I used to be praising the efficiency greater than the opera itself, I consider. What is obvious each from this Salome and La rondine (overview right here) earlier within the season is how a lot – I believe – Sir Antonio Pappano misses all of the opera he used to conduct, regardless of now concluding a exceptional first season because the chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. On the plus facet, at Covent Backyard he would by no means have gotten collectively the forged this live performance efficiency had, nor did he ever get to conduct it there anyway.
Strauss’s one-act opera relies on the Biblical story of Salome, step-daughter of the tetrarch Herod Antipas, who to his dismay, although to the delight of her mom Herodias, requests the top of the prophet Jochanaan (John the Baptist) on a silver platter as reward for dancing the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’, and to take revenge on Jochanaan who spurns her advances. Salome is the by-product of the ethical ills of a hedonistic society and her stepfather and mom are liable for her unhinged persona. Salome is the sufferer of Herod’s paedophile tendencies and her personal insatiable passions and the younger woman’s rejection by Jochanaan triggers a descent to insanity and in the end demise. Finally Salome’s depravity is an excessive amount of even for Herod who orders her to be killed by the troopers on the finish of the opera.
Mahler, trying to no avail to get Salome staged in Vienna in 1905, referred to as Salome an ‘incomparable and totally authentic masterpiece’. In any other case eulogising it in a letter to the composer as ‘your apogee to this point! Certainly, I assert that nothing that even you will have accomplished to this point might be in comparison with it … Each observe is correct! What I’ve lengthy identified is that you’re a pure dramatist.’ I believe again by myself response to Salome through the years and nonetheless consider probably the most doubtful component of it’s not its overt eroticism or necrophilia however the music’s incapacity to persuade me there may be something within the story Strauss disapproves of. Then there may be the caricature of 5 bickering Jews having a theological argument in regards to the destiny of the prisoner which verges on anti-Semitism. Additionally, I’m not even satisfied how strongly Strauss feels about Jochanaan who he has droning on together with his incessant sermonising from the cistern he’s confined to for half of the opera. By no means is there any blame evident within the music, a lot in order that when Herod orders the demise of his stepdaughter for kissing the lips of the prophet’s decapitated head, the chords describe the execution, however don’t condemn it.
These are a few of the philosophical points which frequently should be addressed with Strauss who has obtained off frivolously through the years in comparison with Wagner. Regardless on this event none of this appeared to matter due to some excellent singing and an orchestra on high kind for a conductor with an innate sense of theatre (within the live performance corridor).
The best way this efficiency unfolded – and as nice as Asmik Grigorian (Salome) and Michael Volle (Jochanaan) had been – the opera might have been renamed Herod, so potently did Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke sing and act his half. Regardless that he sat on the far facet on the entrance of the platform, I discovered it inconceivable to not focus my consideration on him when he was singing or – unusually for a live performance model – react to what others had been singing. There was no actual connection between Salome and Jochanaan, however Ablinger-Sperrhacke’s Herod and the equally engrossing Violeta Urmana, as an imperious, scheming Herodias, had been genuinely telling a narrative. Urmana had a grandeur that was chilling, and he or she sang with Ortrud-like malevolence. Elsewhere there have been quite a lot of performances both behind music stands with scores or typically with out. Some singers had been basking within the few phrases within the highlight Strauss allotted them, whether or not it was Niamh O’Sullivan singing movingly as Herodias’s’ web page or as assorted Jews, Nazarenes or troopers. Admirably all of the singers chosen appeared in a position to journey the tumult of the 100plus musicians behind them.
I keep in mind spending time with Michael Volle in 2008 earlier than he went on the stage as Jochanaan (right here) and it was great to see and listen to him dwell in such resplendent vocal well being. He started singing with added echo out of sight in his ‘cistern’ behind the orchestra and whether or not from there or on the entrance Volle was a really dignified Jochanaan together with his portentous utterances slightly extra pious than fanatically zealous. However, he introduced suitably intense disgust to his repeated ‘daughter of Sodom’ and ‘daughter of Babylon’.
I used to be happy to listen to Asmik Grigorian sing dwell for the primary time. I’ve watched her many instances in broadcasts (together with a Hamburg Salome right here) and all my earlier superlatives about her voice are justified. Nevertheless, she regarded on the rating in entrance of her a lot too typically slightly than searching to the viewers or interacting with Jochanaan. So, whereas Grigorian sang with a full, intense, lustrous, wide-ranging soprano of searing energy and so had the ‘voice of Isolde’ the function calls for; she was by no means the opera’s seductive 16-year-old princess and appeared slightly ice-cold, slightly like Turandot (which she additionally sings). Sure, Grigorian might shift immediately from stressed sensuality to psychotic vehemence however she by no means – for me – regarded as if she was fully inhabiting the fiendish function. Grigorian nonetheless deserved her huge ovation from the viewers for her exceptional singing alone.
As heard from an orchestra not confined to a pit in an opera home, Strauss’s rating was revealed as extra voluptuous than ever and brim full of recent concord, hovering symphonic sound and loads of excessive camp. In the course of the opening scene as Narraboth – the younger captain of the guard who’s infatuated with Salome – incessantly praises her magnificence, Pappano reined within the quantity to maintain the textures lucid and set up a mysterious temper filled with foreboding. (Narraboth was sung by a heroic-sounding John Findon who clearly has a fantastic Wagner future forward of him ought to he need it.) Because the disturbing occasions unfolded, Pappano drove his musicians on to envelope us all (the viewers) in swathes of sound and pin us again in our seats with piercing climaxes. Even in moments of visceral ferocity, the enjoying of the London Symphony Orchestra had an distinctive transparency and for the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ (with Gregorian simply sitting listening) Pappano dropped at the music a stressed erotic frisson which ended as near a musical orgasm as you’re more likely to expertise.
What a night! However why, oh why, was it not filmed or in any other case recorded? Sadly solely those that had been there for its two performances can perceive how good it was.
Jim Pritchard
Featured Picture: [l-r] Michael Volle (Jochanaan), Asmik Grigorian (Salome), Sir Antonio Pappano conducting the LSO and John Findon (Narraboth) © Andy Paradise
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Asmik Grigorian – Salome
Michael Volle – Jochanaan
Violeta Urmana – Herodias
Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke – Herod
Niamh O’Sullivan – The Web page of Herodias
John Findon – Narraboth
Liam James Karai – First Nazarene
Alex Otterburn – Second Nazarene
James Kryshak – First Jew
Michael J Scott – Second Jew
Aled Corridor – Third Jew
Oliver Johnston – Fourth Jew
Jeremy White – Fifth Jew
Barnaby Rea – First Soldier
William Thomas – Second Soldier
Hannah McKay – A Slave
Redmond Sanders – Cappadocian
