Only four days before the première, conductor Christoph von Dohnányi withdrew from the Staatsoper’s new production of Salome, citing unspecified artistic differences with director Hans Neuenfels. On the strength of this last-minute backstage drama – and also, perhaps, the reputation of Mr Neuenfels – one might have expected the production to be somewhat more controversial; what emerged instead was visually dazzling, tightly directed and even, given the opera’s potential for violence and sexuality, reasonably demure. If Mr Neuenfels did not always seem overly interested in making the intricacies of his concept accessible to the audience, the staging nonetheless played out with a conviction that suggested an order and intelligence behind its sometimes disorienting parade of weighted images.
Mr Neuenfels and set/costume designer Reinhard von der Thannen created a stark, sleek world of black, white and silver, accented with the occasional flash of red. There were hints of art deco and twenties glamour in the severe lines that framed the stage, the elegant pattern on the floor, and the gorgeous, highly-stylised costumes, but the setting remained ultimately uncommitted to any particular time or place. It was a beautiful yet abstract space for a staging that seemed less concerned with the events of the story than their symbolic potential.
In fact Mr Neuenfels remained largely faithful to the actions of the libretto, but seemed more interested in the opera as an allegorical critique of sexuality and repression than a realistic study of psychology. When the curtain rose, we found Jochanaan imprisoned in a large silver object, somewhere between a rocketship and a phallus, suspended above the stage. Not long afterward, Oscar Wilde himself arrived with a pair of silver testicles attached to the front of his costume. His arrival was heralded by a large red neon sign that read ‘Wilde is coming’ – which was just as well as the actor, Christian Natter, bore not the slightest resemblance to Oscar Wilde – and he set the action in motion by freeing Jochanaan from his tube and removing the sparkly tiara and frilly skirts from Salome’s costume to reveal the streamlined trouser-suit beneath.
Thomas J. Mayer (Jochanaan), Marina Prudenskaya (Herodias), Gerhard Siegel (Herodes), Ausrine Stundyte (Salome), Annika Schlicht (Page der Herodias), and Nikolai Schukoff (Narraboth). © Monika Rittershaus, 2018.
Wilde also appeared in the guise of death during Salome’s dance, and once again at the end guiding Salome through a matrix of forty-two identical plaster heads of Jochanaan. But as with so much else in the production, the figure of the poet appeared to be less an active participant in the drama than an abstract symbol engaged in a complex set of interactions with the other objects and figures on the stage. If the resulting images didn’t always appear to add up to anything definite, something close to a governing idea nonetheless began to emerge. Everyone in Mr Neuenfels’ world was somehow a prisoner of their own character: Salome was a rebel and Jochanaan a fanatic, Herod was a hypocrite and Herodias a survivor, and all were completely powerless, despite their efforts, to do anything other than what their role had foreordained.
The evening featured one highly divisive performance – Ausrine Stundyte’s unconventional take on the title role – and also boasted one of the great Herodiases in recent memory. The latter came from Marina Prudenskaya who, equipped with a sparkling gown and an immobile coif of bleached-blonde hair, seemed to inhabit the world of the story more than anyone else on stage, reacting to everything around her with barely-suppressed rage, sweeping back and forth with elegant, animated strides, and biding her time between lines with small, seemingly involuntary gestures of impatience. In her actions alone was a tightly coiled volatility that even Jochanaan with his hand-wringing and chair-throwing couldn’t match. When she did manage to get a word in, her voice was clear and commanding, incisive but also agitated. Her response to the bickering of the Jews and Nazarenes was charged with credible annoyance, but even in her most spiteful reprimands to Herod there was an anguish that did not allow one to forget the human frailty beneath the severe facade.
Ausrine Stundyte (Salome) and Christian Natter (Oscar Wilde). © Monika Rittershaus, 2018.
Ausrine Stundyte’s Salome was not well-received by some (fairly vocal) members of the audience and it was often difficult to tell how much of her performance was the result of interpretive risks, and how much of the role was simply outside her comfort zone. She did not seem especially concerned with superficial prettiness – although she could and occasionally did summon notes of considerable beauty – nor with tracing an arc from innocent coquettishness to rejection and resentment. Her Salome was hardened from the start, and every moment, from her cursory treatment of Narraboth to her refusal of Herod’s food and wine came across as an act of defiance. Her attempts to convey this brashness of character in vocal terms sometimes forced her to bypass the pleasantries of technique: the high passages near the beginning lacked delicacy, some of her more forceful lines came out savage and unsculpted, and the lowest sections were delivered in a kind of clamped-down Sprechgesang. Yet in her finest moments – her description of Jochanaan’s hair and body, or her obsessive ‘Hättest du mich gesehen…’ near the end – she achieved an undeniable intensity.
Thomas J. Mayer was an excellent Jochanaan, his severe, humourless tone equally well suited to prophecies and tirades; his admonition to Salome to go and seek the son of man was especially thrilling. And Gerhard Siegel provided the evening with a sharply-defined, well-sung Herod whose piquant mixture of malice and cluelessness, clumsily lustful advances and sudden paranoid interludes had enough depth to prevent the character from turning into mere comic relief.
Nikolai Schukoff (Narraboth), Thomas J. Mayer (Jochanaan), Christian Natter (Oscar Wilde), and Ausrine Stundyte (Salome). © Monika Rittershaus, 2018.
After the departure of Christoph von Dohnányi – who had, himself, been brought in when Zubin Mehta was forced to withdraw due to ill health – the conducting duties fell to Thomas Guggeis, the twenty-four year old assistant conductor who, despite less-than-ideal circumstances, guided the Staatskapelle through a respectable performance. There were, as one might expect, some rough patches: the theological dispute of the Jews and the final section of Salome’s dance both required a considerably lighter touch, the offstage execution of Jochanaan lacked the necessary tension, and there were several moments, mostly in the first half-hour, when the orchestral sound was both curiously undifferentiated and far too loud, much to the detriment of the singers. Yet the frenzied playing that accompanied Herod’s auditory hallucinations was impressive.
If it was difficult, in the end, to summon much affection for Mr Neuenfels’ Salome, it is perhaps because its rigorous intelligence and carefully crafted images seemed oddly aloof, so satisfied with their own brilliance that they felt no need to convey that brilliance to the audience. Yet there were too many memorable moments and strong ideas for it to be dismissed as mere indulgence, and one suspects that, on subsequent viewing, its complex tangle of sex and death, repression and rebellion may snap into sharper focus.
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