Genre Exercises

When the curtain went up on the Staatsoper’s new production of Samson et Dalila, it revealed a perspective set of humble sand-coloured dwellings and artificial rock formations with a temple on a hill in the far distance. Lest the set alone prove too subtle, the stage soon filled with a choir of oppressed Hebrews raising their arms to the god who had temporarily forsaken them. There was no question: we were firmly in the land of the fifties biblical epic, a whitewashed world of sackcloth and sandals, of buff prophets, raven-haired seductresses, maniacal priests and occasional shafts of divine light. It was a promising (if somewhat obvious) starting point, and one looked forward to seeing how director Damián Szifron would subvert the conventions of the genre to refashion an ancient story for the twenty-first century. He didn’t. The…