[Met Performance] CID:350931

New Production

Salome
Metropolitan Opera House, Mon, March 15, 2004

Debut : Albert Dohmen, John Easterlin, Vanessa Cariddi




Salome (143)
Richard Strauss | Oscar Wilde
Salome
Karita Mattila

Herod
Allan Glassman

Herodias
Larissa Diadkova

Jochanaan
Albert Dohmen [Debut]

Narraboth
Matthew Polenzani

Page
Katharine Goeldner

Jew
Joel Sorensen

Jew
Roy Cornelius Smith

Jew
Adam Klein

Jew
John Easterlin [Debut]

Jew
LeRoy Lehr

Nazarene
Charles Taylor

Nazarene
Morris Robinson

Soldier
Peter Volpe

Soldier
Richard Bernstein

Cappadocian
Andrew Gangestad

Slave
Vanessa Cariddi [Debut]


Conductor
Valery Gergiev


Production
J?rgen Flimm

Designer
Santo Loquasto

Lighting Designer
James F. Ingalls

Choreographer
Doug Varone





Production photos of Salome by Ken Howard / Metropolitan Opera.
Salome received eight performances this season.

FUNDING:
Production gift of the Gramma Fisher Foundation, Marshalltown, Iowa.
Production gifts from Gilbert S. Kahn and John J. Noffo Kahn and the Janet A. Hooker Charitable Trust.
Addition production gifts from Mr. and Mrs. Sid R. Bass, Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman and Mrs. and Mrs. Ezra K. Zilkha.

Review 1:

Review of Leighton Kerner in the June 2004 issue of OPERA NEWS

The Met's new "Salome" was a torrid affair, thanks to the sight and sound of Karita Mattila in the title role.

The Metropolitan Opera unveiled its fifth production of Richard Strauss's "Salome" on March 15, and it was a torrid Ides indeed, thanks mainly to the sight and sound of Karita Mattila in the title role. This is not to say that the Finnish soprano's colleagues onstage, backstage and in the pit, under the magisterial conducting of Valery Gergiev, didn't contribute to a compelling, if not flawless evening of music-theater. But Manila was the magnetic center of it all.

Vocally, Mattila proved the most convincing Salome the Met has offered since the 1949 prime of Ljuba Welitsch. Both women, spinto rather than high-dramatic sopranos, disproved the composer's oft-quoted dictum that the role needs "the voice of an Isolde." Strauss's "Elektra" does require that kind of Nilssonian power, but the ideal Salome must sing with a youthfully slenderer beam of sound - strong, steady and luminous enough to cut through the heaviest pages of this opera's orchestration yet blend neatly with its many delicate passages. That's what Welitsch did in 1949, and that's what Mattila accomplishes today. Yes, she assaults Jochanaan (John the Baptist) with intense phrases of lust and lashes out at Herod her repeated demands for the prophet's head without stinting on the score's explosive dynamics. But Mattila's princess remains an emotionally precocious virgin, not a betrayed, suicidal woman of screaming fury.

Jurgen Flimm's new staging gives Mattila plenty of scope for naughtiness, and if there are arguable elements, his conception isn't destructively stupid, like the Met's immediately previous version by Nikolaus Lehnhoff (set in the hold of the Titanic at iceberg-time) or Flimm's own Met-debut "Fidelio," in which Jaquino pulls a gun on Rocco and Pizarro is lynched.

What we get here, in conformance to current opera-house fashion, is Herod's glitzy palace in contemporary Israel. Set and costume designer Santo Loquasto went vividly wild in providing high-fashion furniture, an intricate pulley to transport Jochanaan out of and hack into his prison, a bejeweled palace wall, some stylized desert dunes, desert apparel with wings for some silently watching angels (!), and aggressively chic party clothes for the aristos, a particularly notable instance being the body-clinging white number for Salome B.D. (before dancing).

My only serious quarrel with all this is that Flimm has flooded the opera with too much booze, Yes, its Herod's birthday, and some sloshing is not out of line, but Salome has to cradle and drain glass after glass and bottle after bottle, reeling around the stage all the while, as if to reduce her fatal obsession with Jochanaan to a prolonged drunken whim. All that, at least, is eventually washed away by the hilariously vulgar dance choreographed by Doug Varone and executed so enthusiastically by Mattila, right down to the final two seconds of trim nudity.

Then, hastily wrapped in a black robe, Mattila finished the opera in triumph, gradually beating down Herod's resistance to beheading Jochanaan, gloating over and kissing the Baptist's head (or, more accurately a too small, too lightweight replica of it), thrusting her slim sword of a voice through the orchestra's sensuous onslaughts and reducing that voice to orgasmic sighs. (One more minor complaint: at the [first night] performance, Salome was obviously already dead from exhaustion when Herod ordered her death.)

The Met surrounded her with a festival-class cast. Tenor Allan Glassman, substituting for the ill Siegfried Jerusalem as Herod, reportedly without a stage rehearsal, acted all the Tetrarch's neuroses (to put it mildly) and sang like the Siegmund this often rapturous music needs and seldom gets. Mezzo Larissa Diadkova, as Herodias, really sang as well, rather than just yelling, and looked like a wicked beauty instead of the usual wreck. German baritone Albert Dohmen had a strong Met debut as Jochanaan, gently trying to convert Salome to piety, then thunderously cursing her and flinging a nasty ad campaign against Herodias. Matthew Polenzani's Narraboth, Katharine Goeldner's page, Morris Robinson's principal Nazarene, Peter Volpe and Richard Bernstein as sonorous soldiers, and Joel Sorenson, Roy Cornelius Smith, Adam Klein, John Easterlin and LeRoy Lehr, as a musically well-organized quintet of argumentative Jews, all made their music count. And Gergiev kept that magnificent Met orchestra, whether seductive or brutal, at its world-beating best.

(Go to April 7 for Kerner's

Review 2:

Review of major cast changes)



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