Review: SALOME Times Seven Doesn’t Add Up to Extra Enjoyment in New Met Production

Even without an over-the-top production—and the Met has had a couple of those—Richard Strauss’s SALOME has been outraging audiences for more than 120 years. This week’s new take by director Claus Guth in his Met debut was no exception.

An academic named Joseph Kerman is mostly remembered today for his description of Puccini’s TOSCA as “a shabby little shocker.” I can only imagine how he might have described SALOME, which caused a storm at its 1905 premiere in Dresden, because it makes TOSCA look like “Mary Poppins.” (The plusses from the premiere: The audience gave it 38 curtain calls. The minuses, according to the Met’s program notes: Critics deemed it “immoral and cacophonous.”)

Yet here in the “anything goes” 21st century, it puzzles me that directors, and opera houses, still find it necessary to try to outdo the outrages that Strauss and Oscar Wilde (whose play, in a German translation, was the source of Strauss’s own libretto) incorporated in the score. It has thrilling, unstoppable music that I, for one, never tire of hearing. And its eroticism is there, front and center, but nudity is frequently added that surely wasn’t in the earliest productions of the work when people already found it shocking.

But here we are, with the exploration of the abuse that Salome, sung magnificently for the most part by soprano Elza van den Heever, might have suffered at the hands of her stepfather, Herod (the outstanding tenor Gerhard Siegel who seems to own this role) through the appearance of six younger Salomes. A year ago, in the homebase of Sigmund Freud, the Vienna State Opera production from a different director, had only three. (Did they have budgetary constraints?) The subject of abuse, though, was the constant.

According to Guth in the program notes, he set his production at the turn of the 20th century because while it was an age of technological advances. It was also one of rapid social changes that drove Europe to discard the prudish, repressive and mores of the Victorian era, represented here with a bizarre black setting by Etienne Pluss and lighting by Olaf Freese. That last part turns it toward more emphasis on sex, including costumes from costume design Ursula Kudrna.

For most of the show, van den Heever and the girls who played the younger versions of herself, wear little black velvet dresses that modern girls might still wear today. Is it a comment on arrested development that the abuse might have caused, resulting in her obsession with Jochanan (or John the Baptist, a great role for baritone Peter Mattei, who sounds wonderful and is fearless in the presence of Salome)?

The girls get the Dance of the Seven Veils, which is often an embarrassment for the older Salome, and make sense of why they are in constant motion: fear.

The other outstanding member of the cast was the soaring tenor Piotr Buszewski as the Captain of the guard, Narraboth, who is infatuated with Salome and commits suicide. Mezzo Michelle DeYoung wasn’t nearly as terrifying a presence as Salome’s mother, Herodias, as many others I’ve heard, though her henna-ed hair and bold dress were pretty fearsome. Tamara Mumford’s page was on the tame side.

Under Yannick Nezet-Seguin, I can’t say that the Met Orchestra gave the most propulsive rendition of Strauss’s fabulous score (though the Dance of the Seven Veils was nicely done) but nonetheless they pushed Salome to her sad, but deserved, end.

For more information about further performances, please see the Met’s website.

Caption: Elza van den Heever (center) as Salome and her six younger selves.

Credit: Evan Zimmerman/Met Opera