Strauss' Salome at the San Diego Opera

"Salome, tanz für mich.

Wenn du für mich tanzest

kannst du von mir begehren was du willst

Ich werde es dir geben."
   - Hugo von Hoffmannstahl, Salome.

The opera season has started here in San Diego. Last Tuesday, after spending 10 straight hours working myself silly at the computer, I sneaked downtown for a break an caught the second performance of Richard Strauss' Salome at the Civic Theater.

Rush ticket line for Salome at the San Diego Civic Theater.

This not being Munich or any other German-speaking city with great appreciation for one of Strauss' most atonal musical drama, the show was not sold out and there were plenty of rush tickets available at the box office (in case you don't already know this, but it pays to call the SDO a few hours before showtime to ask about rush tickets. The orchestra ones were going for $75 and the balcony ones for only $45!).

Long time readers of my blog might remember that I had a rather contentious relationship with Salome. It was the first opera I ever saw live and the sensationalism of the story, albeit biblical (though the opera was adapted from the Oscar Wilde play), repulsed the then rather prudish me, and kept me from buying another opera ticket for a long time. Salome, the step-daughter/niece of Herod, becomes fixated with Jochanaan (John the Baptist).... or rather, with his body, when he repeatedly rejects her sexual advances while unlawfully visiting him in jail. So when her temperamental (and more than a bit creepy) step-dad asks her to dance for him Salome puts on a rigorous strip tease that is so erotically enchanting that he offers her any reward of her choosing - up to half of his kingdom. Alas, as messed up as Herod is, he couldn't have anticipated the depravity of his step-daughter's request; she wants John's severed head.... and what she then proceeds to do with it is something that should keep young audience from attending this show.

Sean Curran's 2012 staging of Salome at the San Diego Opera. From the balcony.

If the story and the explicitness of Wilde's spotlight on Salome's immorality isn't already disturbing enough, Strauss' indulgence in his ability to describe in music the texture of a dripping drop of blood from a dangling head and every other details of the opera's many gory scenes quite guarantees that nobody would leave a good performance of Salome without many disturbing thoughts in his/her head.

But the performance of this show last Tuesday was quite more than just good. There are already many good reviews posted about it online if you google for it. I was really pleased with just about everything, with the exception of Irina Mishura's one-dimentional caricature portrayal of Herodias (Salome's equally morally deficient mother). The minimalistic staging was very appealingly uncluttered and allowed the show's many good acting singers to show off their stagecraft. The San Diego Symphony under Steuart Bedfort was its wonderful self in the partially covered pit. The orchestra occasionally covered the singers, but I don't think they could have dialed it down much softer. Strauss orchestrated this thing for 112 or so instruments, though the pit at the Civic Theater could only seat about 75 players... That's still a big orchestra!

Lise Lindstorm as Salome performing Dance of the Seven Veils. [Photo: Ken Howard]

Seventy five players can all play softly and you'd still get a pretty dense sound for a soprano to try to slice her voice over. The undisputed star of the show, Lise Lindstorm, didn't find much trouble doing that; however, at least not in the upper part of her range. Her lower passages were sometimes lost behind the orchestral sound (I was up in the balcony, so I got the best acoustic in the house), and I did find her upper voice rather monochromatic after a while. Not that any of that did any harm to her vivid incarnation of opera's most morally repulsive role... One pretty much expects to walk out of this show with either the Dance of the Seven Veils or Salome's obsessive; 'Laẞ mich ihn küssen, deinen Mund, (Let me kiss you on your lips),' or the imagery of her playing out her sexual fantasy with a realistic-looking bloody head uncomfortably stuck in one's head. To much of my surprise the thing that haunted me as I caught the bus home from the theater was what Salome whispered to Jochanaan's permanently displaced head;

'Hättest du mich angesehn ------ Had you looked at me
du hättest mich geliebt. ---------- you would have loved me.
Ich weiß es wohl, du hättest mich geliebt -- I know this well, you would have loved me,
und das Geheimnis der Liebe ist größer -- and the mystery of love is greater
als das Geheimnis des Todes. ------------- than the mystery of death.' 

Aside from the preposterous thought that Salome would have anything credible to say about love. The lass is so psychologically dysfunctional that she would make a sociopath seem warm and cuddly by comparison. The thing that disturbed me was the legitimacy of her complaint. Jochanaan, splendidly assumed by the charismatic Greer Grimsley, was a whole lot of insufferable holier-than-thou y'all-are-gonna-burn-in-hell self-appointed judge of everyone else without much trace of love and/or compassion in his interaction with the admittedly spoiled though still obviously mentally underdeveloped teenage girl. That isn't to say that he deserved to have his head forcibly removed from his body to be used as the girl's celebrated sex toy... but had the man given the lass a real chance and treated her with more compassion this particular Salome might have become receptive to growing some nuggets of human decency and the night might have proceeded rather differently for all involved.

Hättest du mich angesehn... [Photo: Ken Howard]

Of course, this notion that there was a lost chance for redemption for Salome is not supported anywhere in the opera. After all, the lass pays not the slightest attention when Narraboth, Captain of Herod's Guards, kills himself when he could no longer stand her indifference. That I thought of that possibility at all while watching the show convinced me that Lise Lindstrom is one heck of a bloody marvelous singing actress. She could sing, she could dance, and even when she wasn't doing anything she still managed to own the stage just by sitting still on the bare floor gazing into the Civic Theater's cavernous unlit auditorium as Allan Glassman's superbly sung and acted Herod argues with his preposterously cartoonish wife in front of their palace.

I hadn't heard of Allan Glassman before, but I sure will be on the look out for him from now on after seeing what a drama-oriented singer/actor could make out of this normally so dismissibly annoying operatic character. For once, a big voiced tenor who allows me a glimpse of what could have been 'great' about Herod the Great! I should also put in a little kudos here for Sean Panikkar as the tragic Narraboth. He made me wish that role more stage time!

The third performance of Salome at the San Diego Opera starts in just a few minutes. You know, I was actually thinking of going down there to catch it until I stopped by at the bike shop and paid another $100 I didn't really have to have the derailleurs and a few other things fixed. That's pretty much my 'pleasure spending' budget for a few weeks. You know how that goes! If you are in town this weekend, though, the final performance is at 2PM on Sunday. It's only 2 hrs long, so you can go and still come back to catch the second half of the Super Bowl, even!

Strauss, Mozart, and Debussy' La Mer At San Diego Symphony

Well, what do you know it actually rains in San Diego, California! Actually, it has been raining a bit more than usual here this winter courtesy of El Nino. Your smorginess was out all day and much of last night roaming around downtown area. Having somehow managed to complete the crossword puzzle in this week's issue of the San Diego Reader, I swung by Little Italy (via the trolley) to drop off my bid for a free t-shirt (if you complete the week's puzzle before the Monday after, they'll put you in for a draw for a free t-shirt) at their office on India Street.

This being a Saturday, the Mercanto (Farmers' Market) was on along Date Street. Naturally I dropped in to inhale the atmosphere and was rewarded when I ran into this stall-ful of happy Thai cooks watching over a mouth watering pan of hot kanom krok!

They were selling them at 5 pieces for $1. A superb steal since Thai restaurants don't make these. I've been looking for them for years (had them for breakfast almost every morning when I visited Thailand in the mid 90's. They are positively addictive in a most purr-ific way!). Unfortunately this vendor isn't from any local restaurant but from Chef Woods, which only does farmers' market and catering.

Having indulged myself on the rare find of Thai street sweet, I felt like a spoiled brat walking past homeless folks squeezing themselves under the few roofed sidewalk areas in downtown they could park themselves at without getting shooed away for blocking local business. There simply isn't enough shelter space available and many have to brave the elements out on the streets in plain sight of others.

It is especially frustrating walking by those shivering and wet folks into the cavernous space of the Central Post Office... with all the indoor space that isn't in use (it closes at noon on Saturday and isn't open again until Monday morning). The place looks half empty even during weekday business hours. Being a historic building, though, they can't modify it to allow a more efficient use of its space. I wonder how bad could it really be to allow the homeless folks to take shelter there from the rain during the weekend (and providing them with the equipments to clean up after themselves)... That isn't going to happen though.

Anyhow, after coming home to dry off a bit I went out into the rain again and caught the bus downtown for the San Diego Symphony concert of Strauss, Mozart, and Debussy at Copley Hall. They advertised the evening on Debussy's La Mer, but the first half of the performance actually featured Richard Strauss' Don Juan and WA Mozart's beloved C minor concerto for flute and harp.

Maestro Nuvi Mehta, the "Voice of the San Diego Symphony", gave his customary witty and engaging pre-concert lecture complete with listening tips on Strauss' erotically suggestive tone poem (not quite as detailed and explicit as the first part of his overture to Der Rosenkavalier, but no less enthusiastic) and the ideas behind Debussy's famous impressionistically watery orchestral sketches.

After a brief delay Maestro Philip Mann took the podium and drove the San Diego Symphony into a frenzy and steamy reading of Strauss' romantically disillusioned musical portrayal of Don Juan, literature's most prowess womanizer. This is not as romantic a portrayal of this character as you'd find in the opera of Gluck or Mozart but a Faust-like philosopher who burns out his short life in pursuit of the perfect woman (who naturally doesn't exist). The energetic horn section practically blew dry all the wet and damp suits in the auditorium with its enthusiasm. By the final thrust of Don Pedro's sword our clothes were practically steaming.

After a short intermission we were treated to Mozart's beloved C minor concerto for flute and harp, featuring Demarre McGill (flute) and Julie Ann Smith (harp). Both are the principal player of their instrumental section of the San Diego Symphony. I don't think they matched up all that well as concert soloists, though. Mr. McGill was into smooth legato phrasing (a lot easier to do on a wind instrument than on plucked strings like the harp) and delivered his solos in a super fluid flow while Ms. Smith plucked every note she played so clear and cleanly that they sort of got in the way of the melody. It was a good thing that the briskly paced orchestra was somewhere in the middle and the supportive string section proved an apt moderator for the pair.

The final part of the concert was Debussy's three part symphonic sketches, La mer, depicting the senses you get during a day spent by the ever-changing ocean. I don't know how accomplished Maestro Mann and the San Diego Symphony are at painting, but in music making their brass and percussion sections hammered the barometer so far to the ground that my ears popped from the acoustic low pressure system that developed from it. With the windy strings keeping the tempest finale so well fed it was a surprised to learn at the end of the concert that the tsunami from the Chile earthquake had actually missed our coast.

Maestro Mann (who was quite into tsunami warning jokes this evening) then demonstrated how it does pay to keep clapping after a good orchestral performance by indulging the audience with a Bloch number for an encore. The added few minutes ensured that I missed the 10PM bus back home, but it was quite worth the extra 30 wet minutes waiting for the next one!

On another note, the SDSO is into having three of its instrumentalists out in the lobby handing out their fun photocards to symphony-goers before the show. One of the players out last night caught my attention when I read his card and noticed that his hometown is Stara Zagora, Bulgaria! Naturally I had a smorg moment and blurted out to the poor man, bassoonist Valentin Martchev, who was stuck in his line of duty and couldn't very well have ran away from the opera-crazed me, that my favorite singer, Vesselina Kasarova, came from the same town he does. To my delight, Mr. Martchev told me that he knows her quite well (they attended the same music academy) and is very pleased that her artistry is appreciated.

Honestly... there is something special about that Bulgarian town. It produces disproportional number of wonderful musicians!

Stylistic Samplers for Opera Newbies

For those who are new to opera and are curious about how differently the operas from different periods and countries sound, here are links to a few sample clips from the different sub-genres of opera. As you'll see, this is such a huge musical-theater genre that it really has something for everyone.
Renaissance Opera: (1400-1600) The earliest operas are from the late Renaissance period... with minimal instrumentation accompanying the voice. It is as much 'singing' as it is 'sung declamation': speech lifted to a higher emotional content in melody. Until Monteverdi's last opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea) came along, operas from this period usually dealt with mythical figures and stories (Poppea in the opera is, of course, based on the 2nd wife of Nero, Rome's favorite bad boy emperor).
- Di misera regina from Monteverdi's il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (The Return of Ullyses to His Homeland)
- Pur ti miro from Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea

Baroque Opera: The Baroque period (1600-1760) saw the transformation of singing-theater into theater of singing extravaganza and spectacular stage spectacles. On the musical front, this was the age of the castrati, virtuoso vocal acrobats who, willingly or not, had traded their virility for the preservation of their boy soprano vocal range. The story of the operas from this period reverted back to the fantastic rather than the realistic, with magical fireworks, dragons, and griffins, and enchantress and exceedingly amorous leading ladies facing off prodigious knights. Baroque operas tend to be really long and overfilled with spectacular arias that show off the star singers' assets (opera was a socializing event back then and the audience were up and about eating and catching up with friends in the open amphitheater rather than condemned to silence and confined to fixed seat like we are nowadays). 

The Baroque singers really could sing anything from the most heart-breaking of melancholic ballads to feverishly furious rage arias that would rival any of today's heavy metal rock idols. The practice of castrating young men to preserve their singing voice is now (thankfully) illegal, so nowadays opera from this period feature either female mezzo-sopranos or male counter-tenors in the main male roles that the castrati used to sing (their voice range was too high for the tenor. Mezzo-soprani are preferred in heroic ex-castrato male roles because they have a more imposing lower range than most counter-tenors do).
- When I am Laid in Earth from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas
- Lascia ch'io pianga from Händel's Rinaldo
- Qual guerriero in campo amato from Broschi's Idaspe

And here is 'Con ali di constanza' from Händel's Ariodante

Classical Opera (1760-1820): Even spectacular music gets old on you after a while if the collection of it doesn't keep you involved in the main story, so Christoph Willibald Gluck came along to reform opera - turning away from showy music to one that is there to serve the function of telling a compelling story instead. The music of operas from the Classical period is more restraint and less tolerant of the showy improvisation (ornamentation) that was the bloom of the previous period. With Mozart, this period also sees the proliferation of beautiful and drama-oriented ensemble numbers (duets, trios, etc) and orchestration, as the opera story became more relatable to real life (at least the comic operas were, if not the seria ones).

Also in this period the tenor and baritone emerged as the male leads in the opera (castration was beginning to be discouraged then), though many leading male roles were still sung by castrati.
 - Orphée - Eurydice duet from Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice
- Ach, ich fühl from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)
- Der Hölle Rache from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte
- Soave sia il vento from Mozart's Cosi fan tutte
- Se al volto mai ti senti from Mozart's La clemenza di Tito
- Act IV finale from Mozart's Le nozze di FigaroBel Canto opera: (Italian opera from 1810-1835) What Mozart left off, the bel canto composers (Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti) developed into a brief period of vocal wonder at the opera. Bel canto operas were composed by voice-loving composers to the voice-worshiping audience... it pushed to the limit what singers could do with their vocal cords and lung capacity. Long and spun out melodic line both subtly and supply navigated, with fiery virtuoso ending cadenza that reminds of the glory of the Baroque period (but it has to also fit with the story now, and not just done for show).

Castration of singers was banned in the early 1800's, but the audience of those days were still very used to hearing the male soprano voice from the heroic male lead role, so the composers assigned some prominent male roles to the coloratura contraltos/soprano sfogatos instead (these were the equivalent of today's coloratura mezzo-sopranos). Male roles composed for the female voice are what we call 'trouser roles'. Toward the end of the bel canto period, the focus shifted toward making high tenors the romantic lead in the opera.
- Una voce poco fa from Rossini's il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)
- Oh patria/ di tanti palpiti from Rossini's Tancredi
- Spargi d'amaro pianto from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor
- Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi (The Capulets and the Montagues)
 
French Grand Opera (1820's - 1880's): The 1800's was also known as the Romantic period in classical music for good reasons. Gone is the formal restraint of the Baroque and the Classical eras. We are now in for a colorful exploration of emotion and melodrama. Add to that a French flair for the exaggerated (and the fetish for the ballet), and you end up with a really long evening at the opera house (at least 3 hrs a piece... sometimes closer to 5 hrs). So, the music has got to be good enough to keep you in your seat. Also, the orchestra has emerged as a singing force all its own and not just background music accompanying the voice.
- Ah, leve toi soleil from Gounod's Romeo et Juliet
- D'amour, l'ardente flamme from Berlioz's la damnation de Faust
- O ma lyre immortelle from Gounod's Sapho
- Seguedilla from Bizet's Carmen
And here is the Bell Song from Delibes' Lakmé

German Opera (1800's-1920): French grand opera without the ballets (well, mostly without the ballets) and with the Teutonic sense of forboding rather than the French flamboyance... German opera, starting with Richard Wagner, uses the orchestra a lot in their story telling. Listen for 'Leitmotiv', or recurring themes when you listen. These theme represent certain characters or certain motivations or ideas, and the composer liked to wove them in specific sequences to get specific points across, sometimes developing them as the story moves along. Also, there no longer is any 'recitative' or clear cut 'songs'. The music is through-composed, flowing from start to finish to focus on maintaining the drama of the story rather than to allow soloists to show off.
- Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde
- Hab'mir's gelobt from Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier
- Gluck, das mir verblieb from Korngold's die tote Stadt 
Verismo Italian opera (1875-1920): This was a really brief musical period where people flocked to the theater not to escape from everyday life but to get an overdose of it in an ultra condensed hour and a bit of musical blood and gore.
- Voi lo sapete from Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana
- Vesti la giubba from Leoncavallo's il pagliacci

Italian opera (1860-): This is something of a bridge from the death of bel canto opera to the searing theatrical operas of Puccini. It's love, lust, and death... in music so beautifully emotive that you keep coming back just to see the soprano dies over and over again...
- Va, pensiero sulli dorate from Verdi's Nabucco
- Celeste Aida from Verdi's Aida
- Brindisi from Verdi's La traviata
- O soave fanciulla from Puccini's La boheme
- Quando m'en vo (Musetta's waltz) from Puccini's La boheme

Slavic Opera: This.. is romantic musical theater for the melancholic among us...
- Moon song from Dvorak's Rusalka
- Excerpt from Janacek's Jenufa
- Yeletsky's aria from Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spade
- Letter scene from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin

Operetta: The lighter side of musical theater. Finally! This sub-genre of comic satire with sublimely spunky music is for those who would like to be able to walk out of the auditorium at the end of an opera performance without blood spatters on their coat.
- Olympia's doll song from Offenbach's les contes d'Hoffmann
- Barcarolle from Offenbach's les contes d'Hoffmann
- Schenkt man sich Rosen in Tirol from Zeller's Der Vogelhändler



And this is from Offenbach's La belle Helene.

Modern opera: (1920 - ) Ever since Richard Strauss showed the world how effectively an opera story can be conveyed with minimal tonality, many of the modern composers have been afflicted with the distaste for melody. Granted, there are some who still allow songs into their work, but most have opted for atonality and abstract sounds and patterns. It's interesting stuff if you can understand it. If not... ughhh.
- Excerpt from Berg's Lulu
- Excerpt from Fortner's Bluthochzeit (Blood Wedding)
- Excerpt from Britten's Billy Budd
- Excerpt from Glass' Satyagraha
- Excerpt from Picker's Emmeline


Though, there are always exceptions like this melodic tune, Surabaja, Johnny, from Weill's Happy Ends.

So, hopefully after having sampled a few clips from these different sub-genres of opera you would now have a better idea of the sort of opera you would or would not enjoy. I should caution against having too fixed an opinion on what opera to avoid, though. Our musical taste can change over time. Some works do grow on you after a while... so, keep trying the operas you don't now like. You never know, maybe some will become one of your favorites many years from now.

Other opera-related essays you might find of interest: A Few Words To Opera Newbies, Commandments for the Operafans, 10 Beginners-Friendly Opera, Bel Canto Is NOT About Sounding Beautiful!, Do Today's Opera Singers Measure Up to Past Legends? -

Interviews: Juliette Galstian (mezzo-soprano), Christiane Karg (soprano), Elizabeth Tryon (soprano),