Salome as a Normalized Monster

Richard Strauss’s Salome

Metropolitan Opera

December 8, 2016

Salome reels her crazy in.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Richard Strauss’s Salome is a rollercoaster ride of a sexual coming of age story. The eponymous heroine is a spoiled brat who refuses to return the love of the captain who throws himself at her feet. She is burdened by the misplaced erotically charged attentions of King Herod, her stepfather. Yet she gets all caught up in an unrequited love story with the king’s prized prisoner, Jochanaan, or John the Baptist. In the current cast at the Met’s revival of a production that dates back to 2004 and the dawn of the war in Iraq, Željko Lučić sings him with mellifluous prophetic power (and not, as the character is more often portrayed, as a brutal monster).

Salome takes us to a deep and dark place with her longing to have her affection returned and then with a subsequent desire for senseless revenge. In the Bible, the wishes of her mother are what she is seeking to fulfill. In Strauss’ opera, thanks in large part to Oscar Wilde, the perverse “coming of age” of a twisted young woman, who grew up in an immoral court of self-indulgence and general dissolution, is what blossoms massively to the fore. The Salome of the opera is a privileged little lady who is accustomed to getting what she wants particularly from the men in her life. She is the apple of every man’s eye (or so she thinks) and so when she meets a man who refuses to give her the time of day she ends up feeling particularly spurned.

The Dance of Seven Veils in drag.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Her desire for revenge leads her to disobey her mother’s orders and agree to perform a spirit-lifting strip tease for her lascivious lord and stepfather. Here her “Dance of the Seven Veils” is a gender bending Marlene Dietrich-inspired choreography. Salome comes out in drag – a very Wilde a move. Dressed like a man, in a top hat, tuxedo vest and pants, she taunts her easy audience with her titillating routine. From our cheap seats it was far from clear how revealing she went, but apparently she went all the way. Which is only fitting for the symbolic gesture it is meant to represent. Herod gave his word and if she expects to hold him to it, she needs to stick to hers.

Salome always gets her man.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Patricia Racette isn’t the huge Wagnerian soprano you might come to expect for a role that has to sing out over Strauss’s superlative orchestration. She is seductive, though more fickle than impulsive and more nonplussed than obsessed as the spoiled young princess. She gave us both a physically revealing performance as well as an emotionally raw one between the dance of the seven veils and her slow, steady decline over the head of her conquest once her wish is granted. Nevertheless, her emotional range was dainty and more delicate about her obsession, and she was far from maniacal (as the character is more typically depicted). As a result, Racette’s Salome came off less unhinged and more out of touch with the reality of her actions and their consequences. In my book it is still a valid reading and a strikingly fresh one. The whole score comes off sunnier and more palatable. Some of the truly dark and dingy takes on the piece can really take you in a jaunt through the gutter of the female psyche. This Salome was slightly more relatable, if that is even possible, almost as a normalized monster.

Gerhard Siegel as Herod is that big forceful Wagnerian voice you might expect. He was both commanding and pathetic. He could project out over the orchestra especially in his moments of desperation.

Under the direction of Johannes Debus, the orchestra brought Strauss’s picturesque score vividly to life. He evinced cinematic sounds from every twist and turn of the musical landscape with its exotic oboe motif. The score is very interesting and it has a continuous flow that keeps you on the edge of your seat. But tonight’s performance greatly toned down the frenetic oddities of the score, the weird stuff that has often made Salome seem like a strange mess to me. The whole take on the opera was more sober.

The pastiche of a production.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

Jürgen Flimm’s production isn’t entirely convincing as it really is a hodgepodge of disjointed elements. On one end there are futuristic stairs that seem to have been borrowed from the neighboring Apple Store. On the other half of the stage, desert hills that are cartoonishly majestic. The decadence of Herod’s court is coded as decisively colonial if not downright western. The prisoner is kept in an oil well? A mine shaft? Or just a well for water? The captain kills himself with a firearm. The revelers all swill champagne from bottles that bear contemporary labels that could have been bought at any nearby liquor store. The revival of recent experiments in Euro-trash levels of Regietheater like this one, which hasn’t aged terribly well, is a testament to the transitory nature of this directorial style. No matter how open I am to stimulating new takes on the classics, it begins to feel like our Regietheater days are numbered at the Met. Investments in longer lived concepts may be in order so long as the life span of a new production has to be as long as a decade or two.

– Lui & Lei

The Seven Angels of the Apocalypse look ominously on.
Photo credit: Ken Howard

A Southern Italian Odyssey of Betrayal and Murder

Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana / Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci

Metropolitan Opera 

April 14, 2015

The two faces of the star of the show.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

The Met’s new production of Cavalleria Rusticana is a solemn and downtrodden outing. Purportedly set over Easter weekend in Sicily where the oranges are supposed to hang redolent on the air alongside the square (Aranci olezzano sui verdi margini) and the sunshine of springtime in southern Italy ought to burn brightly, Sir David McVicar’s new setting is instead dark and brooding. All we get is a stark “piazza” and minimalist details that do little to set the scene no matter how effective they are for transitions between piazza, church, tavern, home, and back again. While I’m not necessarily against essential productions, this one definitely missed the mark. I could not get over the darkness that made the whole thing feel more like a northern European Protestant winter rather than a Sicilian Catholic spring. 

Sicilian Easter on McVicar's set in all its starkness.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

To me the Sicilian land, with its almost violently bright sunlight and generous nature, is an important character in Cavalleria. A place of strong contrasts, torrid and sensual, stirring irresistible passions that lead to tragic impulsive acts. McVicar’s sets, with the only touch of color being a basket of tomatoes in the market scene, if anything stirred a sad gloominess, but certainly nothing remotely sensual or impulsive, which is kind of the point of this opera. On the other hand, the costumes were very Sicilian. And the opening passages of the opera, both its in medias res serenade and initial choruses, are sung in Sicilian dialect which is very musical. But it was a bit strange to hear foreign voices intone these southern accents. It does not quite compute in the mouth of singers who sounded more comfortable singing German. But oh well. Opera is an international art form, as it almost always has been.

Lola amidst her people.
Photo Credit: Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

I’m usually not a fan of verismo opera, especially when in the hands of Puccini when he is at his sappiest in La Boheme. But there is something irresistibly evocative and viscerally suggestive, almost seductive and sexy to me about Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. There is something to be said about bringing verismo back to its original literary roots in Italy. As a movement it is often placed in a league with the gritty urban French “naturalism” of Emile Zola. But the Italian verismo of Giovanni Verga, the author of the play and short story on which the opera is based, is driven by a different set of social and geographic concerns that are determined largely by its roots in Sicilian peasant life, rather than the underbelly of Parisian life. Verga gives us a different kind of striving and struggling and suffering in the figures of his fishermen, peasants and other subaltern individuals and it translates to the opera stage far more effectively. 

Santuzza implores Turiddu.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera 

The orchestra led by maestro Fabio Luisi plowed through the stunning score with intensity and beauty. For Mascagni’s is such beautiful music. And so unconventional in many ways with its opening in medias res and its two choral introductory passages alternating with musical interludes. The singing was also mostly phenomenal. Marcelo Alvarez as the cold-blooded mamma’s boy, Turiddu, was a revelation. While I’ve seen him before, this was the first time he really impressed me. Alvarez burst onto the scene with a full round tenor sound that we don’t get nearly enough at the Met. He was manly and masculine and full chested as he made easy work of his long legato lines. 

I was particularly moved by his “Tu qui, Santuzza,” about halfway through, when he lets his spurned lover know that he is not a slave to her insane jealousy because he intends to go back to his previous lover – nevermind the fact that she is now rather inconveniently married to the biggest, baddest bass baritone in town, who also just happens to like to crack his whip any chance he gets (Schiocca la frusta). The “Tu qui, Santuzza” scene evolves beautifully from a standoffish put down (Bada, Santuzza, schiavo non sono) to a passionate duet in which the audience witnesses the depth of the love bond these characters actually do share (No, no, Turiddu, rimani ancora). Even if the text of what they’re saying to each other dramatizes their unfriendly separation and Turiddu’s insistent leavetaking, Mascagni has scored it in such a way that underscores their contrapuntal affection. It is the stuff that heart-wrenching drama is made of. And Alvarez and Westbroek brought it forcefully to life. I was tingling all over.  

Turiddu and Santuzza have a moment.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

Soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek’s Santuzza was beautifully acted and powerfully sung. I find Santuzza’s plight heartbreaking. Poor Santuzza and all that she is forced to endure at the whims of this cowardly mammone (mamma’s boy). I mean, come on, Turiddu is supposed to marry her but betrays her, lies to her face and goes to church (!) with his lover Lola right under Santuzza’s nose. Also, he is not even enough of a man to stand behind his actions and runs whining to his mamma Lucia all the time. What an immature jerk! He really does seem to get what he deserves when Lola’s irascible husband Alfio finally kills him. 

"A te, la mala Pasqua!"
Photo Credit: Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

My one big qualm with Westbroek’s performance is the way in which she chose to embody the “mala Pasqua” curse she levels at her offender at the end of their big showdown scene. When a southern Italian, especially a Sicilian woman, intones a mala Pasqua against you, they say it like they mean it. We’re talking Medea-style, chthonic earth cult Mediterranean thumos coming at you loud and clear, with the visceral fury of a wounded wild animal. When Westbroek got to it she sang it with a weary worn out desperation that half seemed like she didn’t really mean it, especially when accompanied by facial expressions and body language that made it seem like she immediately reconsidered what she said, as if she couldn’t believe what she just uttered, rather than unleashing on him the fury of a dishonored southern Italian woman along with all the force of the land that bore and bred her. When a woman like Santuzza issues a mala Pasqua curse, she definitely does not regret it and rides that boiling wave of anger for a long while before calming down. 

Santuzza in the Sicilian borgo.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

Both Mascagni and Verga give us a pessimistic vision of the lower classes in this Sicilian borgo who are oppressed by culture though they should be uplifted by nature that is springing back to life all around them. But there is no Christ-like resurrection here. No rebirth. Only the struggle of two equally ill-fated individuals, one perhaps more morally just than the other, to live out their passions. There will be no resurrection of the flesh for compar Turiddu this Easter. 

Model of McVicar's early 20th Century Pagliacci set.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

McVicar’s new Pagliacci on the other hand is an entirely different beast. He sets it in a town square that is bustling with realistic detail including stunning depth of field with an authentic looking southern Italian bar in the farthest reaches of the stage that bristles with small town life – beautiful details that made me nostalgic for small town Italian life. So charming. So gritty. The modernizing touches with respect to the Met’s prior cartoonish production of Pagliacci were just a handful: a truck (instead of a horse-drawn caravan), some telephone poles and electric wires and the visual vocabulary of the vaudeville stage replacing that of the commedia dell’arte. Otherwise this production, while pleasant and visually engaging, felt pretty safe, traditional and not terribly innovative. The contrast with McVicar’s approach to Cavalleria was nevertheless striking. From so stark and lifeless to so bubbling with life, what does he really accomplish dividing the split bill so squarely? 

Canio, the clown is not all laughs.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

Marcelo Alvarez continued to impress as Canio, a more noble and moving character than that useless and cruel Turiddu. He embodied the painful intertwining between theatrical fiction and harsh reality with a profound, heart-piercing desperation that moved me to tears, particularly in the signature aria Vesti la giubba. His female counterpart, the cheating wife Nedda, was played by soprano Patricia Racette, who positively surprised me with an extremely energetic stage presence and a vocal performance to match it, particularly effective in her duet with her lover Silvio and in the vaudeville performance. Georgian bass-baritone George Gagnidze was also on double duty from Cavalleria (where he played a lumbering lug of an Alfio), here more incisive as the troupe’s hunchback Tonio, also in love with Nedda.

Nedda struts her stuff.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

While musically and dramatically I prefer Cavalleria over Pagliacci, I did find McVicar’s specific direction choices for the Leoncavallo companion piece more enjoyable and true to the original narrative core when compared to his take on Mascagni. The meta-theatrical themes of Pagliacci came vividly to life in this production’s cheerful Italian village. I cannot help but wonder, though, if they injected some Sicilian sunshine into Cavalleria, what a better show it would have been.

– Lui & Lei

Commedia dell'arte goes Vaudeville.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

The Fascist, the Singer and her Lover

Puccini's Tosca at the Met

November 2, 2013

Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera

Lei: This is the tale of Tosca, a fiery brunette (complexion becomes an important plot point), who also just happens to be an opera singer, and her lover Cavaradossi, a tormented painter. Together they suffer the hardships of an oppressive regime, represented by Scarpia, an evil (and perverted) secret police chief. The painter is working on a portrait of Mary Magdalene that depicts a blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty and causes Tosca to throw a jealous fit, demanding proof of his fidelity – though it seems like her jealousy is part of the couple’s dynamic since they are otherwise profusely lovey-dovey. Politically, Cavaradossi is opposed to the regime in power and helps a fugitive friend in his escape from prison. Enter the evil police chief who suspects the painter and lusts creepily after the singer. From here on, the action only heats up, and violently so. By the beginning of Act Two, the police have captured the painter who refuses to betray his fugitive friend.

The Fascist Scarpia and his three "Graces"
Photo credit: Mary Altaffer

Lui: Though the opera is originally set in Rome 1800, the police chief's study in Act Two of this production is taken directly out of Bernardo Bertolucci's World War II-era thriller, Il Conformista, and so this Tosca is given a decidedly camicia nera, fascism-in-Italy spin. While prostitutes lounge about in various states of undress, the evil chief of police, dressed in fascist black overcoat and vest, paces to-and-fro meditating on how to act on the latest object of his desire. Scarpia is a perverse sexual predator. He ends up fitting the fascist stereotype even in this regard.

Photo credit: Marty Sohl / The Metropolitan Opera

Lei: Scarpia then has the singer come over while his henchmen torture her lover in the next room so she can hear his excruciating cries of pain. Tosca cannot stand it and divulges the escapee's whereabouts. As a result, the painter is condemned to a public hanging for his anti-regime activities. The perverted police chief proposes a deal to the devastated singer: if she lets him use her body for a "quickie" (literally, he says “a te chieggio un istante”), he’ll save the painter by arranging a mock shooting in lieu of a hanging. The singer reluctantly agrees but also very fortuitously finds a knife lying around and, when the evil police chief is about to rape her, she stabs him to death.

Patricia Racette was a fine Tosca with good acting presence, however her singing left me lukewarm, no shivers whatsoever. George Gagnizde’s Scarpia was also acceptable but lacked the cruelty required by the role, both vocally and acting-wise. I think Dmitri Hvorostovsky would make a magnificent Scarpia – now that would be a believable villain (although based on a 2007 interview it sounded like Dmitri was not willing to tackle it quite yet).

Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera

Lui: Act Three opens beautifully with a subdued orchestral prelude. All of a sudden the melancholic voice of a shepherd boy pierces the scene sending tingles through the house. I was blown away by the sheer beauty of Puccini's orchestral atmospherics. Cavaradossi maintains the "cold dawn" mood of the opening as we find out that he going to give his ring – his last worldly possession – to the guard in exchange for the promise that his last letter will reach his beloved Tosca. The whole scene remains introspective when he breaks into "E lucevan le stelle." He is destitute. He has been imprisoned, mistreated, tortured. He is a bruised-up, bloody mess, and he is about to be executed. In thinking of his true love, he remembers their one big liaison in the park after dark. This is the pain of a man who has been beaten down, who is left with nothing, wanting only to relive one of life's fleeting joys: the unexpected spiritual exaltation of physical intimacy with another person. 

Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera

This aria is without a doubt the climax of the whole opera, I would argue, its raison d'être. And it is not necessarily an aria in the strict traditional sense. There is no refrain, no repetition, no songy progression. It is pure poetry – a beautifully sustained single crescendo of raw emotion that departs from the sensory experience of beauty, as it is impressed on the memory, and that soars on eagle's wings to the heartfelt recognition that life never got any better than that moment, though its upward flight is stunted by the realization that now all he has to look forward to is his time to die: "Muoio disperato." It is melancholic, bittersweet, and I tingle still at just the thought of hearing it sung live in its narrative context. And this is where Roberto Alagna really stole the show. He took the emotions exactly where they needed to go. It was some of the best singing I've heard from a tenor at the Met in recent memory. It is moments like these that justify my love of the medium. It's everything that matters in life boiled down to three minutes of poetry and feeling expressed through music.

Lei: I am generally not a Roberto Alagna fan. While technically capable and powerful, I usually find his tone not deep or warm enough and at times even fake, as though he does not really mean what he's singing. Nevertheless, in his Act Three embodiment of Cavaradossi’s “E lucevan le stelle” he proved me wrong, showcasing the raw desperate emotion of a man about to die, remembering and longing for the woman he loves. I cried copiously.

Tosca then runs to the imprisoned painter to explain the deal she cut for him, all while providing some theatrical advice on how to feign death when fake-shot. Unfortunately, the singer should have known better than to trust the word of an evil (and perverted) police chief, since the execution turns out to be a very real one, with the painter actually being shot to death by firing squad. The singer cannot believe how utterly evil and untrustworthy the police chief was and, when trapped by his henchmen, she jumps to her death.

Photo credit: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

I am not a Puccini person. I generally find his operas too cheesy and unnecessarily sappy, with plots that are not complex enough to make the drama of the music really credible. I mean, it’s too bad that Cio-Cio-San is cheated by that colonialist pig Pinkerton and that Mimi dies of tuberculosis, but tragedies like these are simply not intricate enough for my operatic taste. I like works with over-the-top multiple layers of dynamic dramatic tension. Maybe verismo is just not for me. Tosca, however, is a possible exception to my Puccini aversion, and it may be because (at least in Acts Two and Three) it is action packed with several extreme situations that justify the dramatic outbursts of the score.

Lui: After finally seeing Tosca for the first time, I now see clearly the link between Italian neo-realism and Puccini's brand of operatic verismo. I have long been aware of the fact that there is very little raw "realism" to the plotlines of so-called "neo-realist" Italian cinema. Although shot on a shoestring with non-professional actors, the films of Roberto Rossellini and company, nevertheless, have more in common with melodrama.  And this production at the Met emphasized many of these parallels. Seeing that Puccini wrote these harrowing scenes of brute institutional force, political violence and torture in the year 1900, this production demonstrates how he beat Rossellini and the neo-realists of the post-war period to the punch by nearly half a century. The torture and subsequent execution scene are the obvious forerunners to the climax of Roma città aperta and are no less grueling.

Scarpia's Study, Act II
Photo credit: Ken Howard / The Metropolitan Opera

Lei: I saw this Luc Bondy production at the 2011 season opening performance and back then I found it unconventionally interesting, however today I think I may have been blinded by the gala excitement as, after seeing it again, I felt it was really hit and miss. While Tosca does not necessarily have to be a Zeffirellian baroque extravaganza, it does need to give the audience something to engage with. And I think this production takes a “period-minimalist” route that does not always work and is generally so dimly lit that I had to squint through my opera glasses to figure out the sets. While I get the concept that the action takes place in obscure tyrannical times, a little more light would have been good, both for the staging and the eyes of the audience. The first act is all set in the transept of a dark no-frills brick church that it’s just bland, and also historically at odds with the Caravaggio-style painting Cavaradossi is working on. Also, the “Te Deum” scene at the end of the first act just did not work. It is supposed to be a moment of contrast between choral religious fervor and Scarpia’s devilish attitudes, however, in this production the worshipers and the clergy were walking along the transept, behind Scarpia, almost following him, while in a more credible rendition (at least by Roman Catholic standards), the chorus should proceed along the nave of the church, towards the altar, with Scarpia left in the back, scheming his wrongdoings.

The Te Deum scene in Franco Zeffirelli's Tosca at the Met in 1999
Photo credit: Ruby Washington / The New York Times

The Te Deum scene in Luc Bondy's Tosca in 2013
Photo credit: Andrea Mohin / The New York Times

The second act worked better and had some interesting off-libretto variations, such as the three prostitutes entertaining Scarpia while he explains his preference of brutal lust over romantic love (“Ha più forte / sapore la conquista violenta / che il mellifluo consenso”). The torture scene with the bloodstained door letting in a cone of light and Cavaradossi’s laments was also very effective.  

The sets of Act Three were just weird and felt almost incomplete, with an L-shaped fortress structure occupying less than a third of the stage, and the remainder of the space just empty green-black darkness with some streaks of white. If such parking-lot looking space was supposed to be the river Tiber, it was just not represented very vividly.

Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera 

One thing that worked extremely well in Act Three, however, was the very last scene, where Tosca runs up the stairs escaping Scarpia’s henchmen and jumps off the ledge into the dark. This production shows Tosca’s full body actually leaning out of the tower at an angle that looked extremely credible, with the lights going to black while she’s almost mid-air, cinematographically freezing the sight of Tosca in her extreme suicidal gesture.

Lui: After a slow start in Act One, it was a chilling finale to an emotionally-intense last two acts.

Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera