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Opera News
March 14, 1998 STRAUSS: Salome (Video)
Veils are everywhere in French director Luc Bondy's famous Salzburg Salome, filmed from last year's Covent Garden restaging. This production is overspread with fabric like a Christo-wrapped monument -- veiling Salome early on and concealing the severed head for most of the final scene. Herodes hides under a veil during the beheading, and even Jochanaan fondles Salome's discarded textile in the harassment scene. Bondy is always doing the unexpected, with results that can be thought-provoking or annoying. Keeping the head covered almost until the end, for instance, does sustain tension and interest. The long progression of veilings serves symbolically to track the central deed all the way from the first inklings of desire to the bloody aftermath. On the other hand, why does Herodias (Anja Silja) resemble a drunken Hedda Gabler? You'll have to read the program notes to learn that the action has been transplanted to turn-of-the-century Central Europe, and that the constantly darkened set (designed by Erich Wonder) is meant to depict a ruined Hapsburg castle. But Herodes (Kenneth Riegel), with his bright-red punk hair, seems to be turning the wrong century, and Catherine Malfitano as Salome dances her Viennese waltz (in Lucinda Childs' non-Orientalist choreography) in a knee-length skirt. There is no lack of graphic grit; the head is not merely kissed. Still, this remains a cerebral Salome, detail-driven both in music and staging. Christoph von Dohnányi's dissection of the score isolates individual instruments and phrases, sometimes with telling effect. His muffled orchestra coddles a somewhat overtaxed cast, at the expense of Straussian eloquence. Sure-footed and frenzied, Malfitano sounds more expressive but also more ragged than in her earlier video performance under Sinopoli. With Silja and Riegel sometimes verging on Sprechstimme, vocal honors are easily won by the resonant Jochanaan of Bryn Terfel. Unrelenting darkness, merciless close-ups and less-than-brilliant sound reproduction detract from the overall impact. Surely this production worked far better in the theater than here. - DAVID J. BAKER
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