Santa Fe Opera, Part 1: A Double Revenge

Salome is nothing if not robust. Even when stripped of its Judaean setting and its Victorian visions of excess, it remains a highly focussed – and wonderfully entertaining – study of desire and madness. In Daniel Slater’s intriguing new production, which appeared as part of the Santa Fe Opera’s 2015 season, the desire remained intact but was no longer the sole source of Salome’s undoing. Instead Mr Slater sought the germ of her insanity in the depths of the back-story and, if the results were not always dramatically successful, his vision was fascinating enough to ensure a consistently engaging evening. The action, in this production, had been transferred from Judaea to a strange landscape of treacherous slabs and shattered floors, at the centre of which was a large rotating metal box. The characters may have been dressed in…