SALOME • OPER ZÜRICH

★★★★☆☆

Photo Paul Leclaire

REVIEW SALOME: SPACY RETRO SCI-FI IN ZURICH

Top soprano Elena Stikhina is impressively powerful in Zurich, where popular director and opera director Andreas Homoki bids farewell with a revival of his avant-garde retro sci-fi interpretation of Salome: Musical drama of a calibre that gets under the audience’s skin.

The opera was a modernist breakthrough, and here’s a quick lesson: after his first two operas, Richard Strauss was looking around 1905 for a new story with enough explosive power to make his third a breakthrough that could be both heard and felt.

Photo Paul Leclaire

The choice fell on the eccentric, homosexual writer Oscar Wilde’s play Salome, which had already caused a furore in England with its harsh erotic content and layers upon layers of raw psychological revelations.

The haunting story was combined with a surprising new musical universe in which Richard Strauss broke free from his musical ties to Wagner.

The opera was an instant success and is now one of the most frequently performed works in the modern repertoire.

Photo Paul Leclaire

With its twisted plot, Salome is perhaps not exactly an opera for beginners, but it is already a new classic and should be seen when the opportunity arises. It is a one-act opera that usually lasts less than 1.5 hours.

The likeable and highly successful theatre director and stage director Andreas Homoki is bidding farewell to the Zurich Opera after 14 years of one triumph after another. In his staging of Salome, star soprano Elena Stikhina is cast with dramatic power and vocal prowess in one of the most challenging roles in opera.

Homoki has set the story in a strange non-world of modernist, brightly coloured sets of a geometric, sculptural nature. Presumably to expose the characters’ complex psychology and thus cut the soul of the story to the bone.

What we experience is human depravity manifested as corrupt power, incestuous abuse and infantile desire without inhibitions.

Photo Paul Leclaire

Simone Young’s orchestral direction is impeccable and carries the performance forward with all the wildness and originality in the composition that Strauss introduced with Salome and continued in works such as Elektra and Die Frau ohne Schatten.

Foto Paul Leclaire

The ensemble performs in bizarre Moonbase Alpha overalls, mimicking the soldiers at King Herod’s court. Some will probably think that the staging’s insistent approach works more as a counterpoint than as a complement.

As you probably know, the story is about the king’s daughter Salome’s furious desire for the imprisoned John the Baptist, who rejects her advances – which only makes things worse.

After giving in to her stepfather’s lust, Salome dances the Dance of the Seven Veils for him – a kind of masked incest, where the prize is John the Baptist’s head on a platter, so that Salome can kiss his lips in a frenzied finale. As Oscar Wilde said: Sex is about power.

The performance draws wild cheers from the audience and is unlike anything I have seen before.

A beautiful artistic manifesto and a worthy farewell salute to Zurich from a great director, who, from 19 September, can be experienced with a promising mega-production of the Jesus Christ Superstar musical with several hundred performers in Hangar 4 at Berlin’s disused Tempelhof Airport.

Four stars from Got to see this for Salome. Powerful art that challenges its audience for better or worse.