BWW Reviews: SALOME is a Feast for the Senses

Reviewed Saturday 24th August 2013

State Opera of South Australia started their main stage programme for the year with a powerful production of Salome, with a libretto by Richard Strauss based on Hedwig Lachmann's German translation of Oscar Wilde's play. Richard Strauss, of course, also wrote the score of the opera. It is derived from two passages in the New Testament, Mark 6:17-29 and Matthew 14:3-11, where Salome is referred to only as the daughter of Herodias. Other sources are also referenced and a certain degree of artistic license has been taken.

This is a new Opera Conference production, created with The Combined resources of Australia's opera companies. Highly skilled and experience director, Gale Edwards, has missed nothing in finding all of the tension, drama, tragedy, and corruption within the script, leaving the audience reeling by the final demise of Salome.

The set, by Brian Thomson, is not easily forgotten, with a row of animal carcases strung across the very rear, in front of which sit Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Judea, and his family, with a collection of diverse representatives of various religions. Taking up the bulk of the stage in front of this, is a multi level set around a large circular centrepiece, with the heavy round grid below which is Jokanaan's (John the Baptist's) prison. Blood red is the colour of the set, and often the colour of John Rayment's lighting. This is all a fitting backdrop to the gruesome tale about to unfold. Julie Lynch;s costumes are an unusual blend of styles and eras. The soldiers for example, wear camouflage trousers, futuristic jackets, bandoliers, and carry knives, and spears.

In the title role is South Australian soprano, Kate Ladner, who now works in the UK. She made the role her own in a wonderful performance filled with emerging sexual potency, coquettishness, lust, deviousness, fury, and a host of other dangerous emotions, leading to insanity and a necrophilic assault on the disembodied and blood-dripping head of Jokanaan, a superb piece of work by its constructors. Her voice soars, roars and seduces by turns in an exceptional and captivating performance.

Obviously, such a performance must be balanced by the other principals, and so it was. Elizabeth Campbell brought a significant presence to the role of Herodius, claiming an equal involvement in the demand for the death of the prophet, and some strong jealousy and displeasure when Herod sets his paedophilic and incestuous eyes on the young Salome, his step-daughter. Herodius, of course, was previously married to his brother. Campbell struts angrily and confrontingly after the lecherous Herod, her voice booming out her demands for his fidelity.

Herod is sung by tenor, Hubert Francis, who presents a self-centred Herod who cares little that his guests and wife see him desperately chasing his after step-daughter, offering her half his kingdom, and even her mother's throne, in exchange for performing the infamous Dance of the Seven Veils for him. Francis makes Herod a somewhat comic character through his stupidity in chasing the pubescent Salome, adding an enormous amount of physicality to the performance. He conveys well Herod's dismay at Salome's choice of reward for her dance and his ineffectiveness when he fails to talk her into an alternative.

Adelaide baritone, Douglas McNicol, brings strength, power and poise to the beaten and battered Jokanaan, who stands firm in his belief in God and knowledge of the imminent arrival of Jesus. His excellent portrayal of Jokanaan gives us very charismatic character, accusatory and yet offering redemption, which Salome rejects and Herod finally ignores. McNicol makes Jokanaan the pillar of strength and propriety that is necessary to stand against the decadence of Herod and his Court and support the the attitudes of them against him.

In the smaller roles of Narraboth, who loves Salome in vain, and the page who, in turn, futilely loves him, Bradley Daley and Anne Marie Gibbons offer another pair of well considered and realised performances. Even the guards and religious leaders are played by a collection of Adelaide's very best singers: Tasso Bouyessis, Robert England, Ernst Ens, Adam Goodburn, Bernard Hull, Robert Macfarlane, Thomas Millhouse, Jeremy Tatchell, Nicholas Todorovic, and Andrew Turner. This is a vocally superb production.

There is also, of course, the music of Strauss, complex and evocative, and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, under its Musical Director and Chief Conductor, Arvo Volmer, gives a sensational performance of this incredibly rich score, bringing out every nuance, and doubling the power of the events unfolding on stage. The forces needed for this work are huge, including a hecklephone, a contrabassoon, two timpanists, and seven percussionists, and the score even includes an organ. It was great to hear the Festival Organ playing behind the scenes.

I was not convinced that replacing the Dance of the Seven Veils with seven erotic dancers, including a pole dancer and a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, really worked, but that is a minor quibble compared to the rest of the production.

This is 100 minutes that no opera lover will want to miss, but there are only three more performances, so move quickly.

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