Nadja Michael in Salome San Francisco 2009, (c) Cory Weaver
(Warning – if you are of a sensitive disposition or under 16 you might not want to read on, it’s Salome after all!).
Given that I don’t actually like Strauss all that much, or indeed at all, why have I seen Salome twice in the last couple of years? Two reasons, one minor and one major.
The minor reason is that it’s mercifully short! Unlike dear Der Rosenkavalier. I know, I’m an opera dyke I ought to love Der R but really there are bits that remind me of that feeling you get usually about two thirds of the way through an 11 hour flight when you feel like now would be a good time to gouge your own eyes out with a plastic coffee stirrer before running screaming up and down the aisle begging someone to end it all for you. Which brings me to San Francisco and the major reason I have seen Salome twice in the last couple of years – Nadja Michael. But let’s begin at the beginning…
Once again I found myself straight off a long haul flight and into the delightful environs of SF Opera House (last time was for Idomeneo). The house always reminds me of an opera house as envisioned by a pre-pubsecent girly girl – dainty and cute and just a teeny bit over the top but saved by youthful enthusiasm. The audience was the usual US mix of improbable groupings; the gaggle of girls that look like they got lost on the way to a Just Because I’m a Virgin for Jesus Doesn’t Mean I don’t want to Look Smokin’ Party, the bored executives dragged there by even more bored suburban housewives who really will go to anything that gives them an opportunity to wear their Armani and (tasteful) bling. The 70s throwback sporting vintage Bill Blass and a suspiciously glazed look in the eyes. The, this being SF, large number of gay couples in perfect evening wear and with beautifully manicured nails. And the opera dykes, sporting regulation short and neat fingernails and looking very excited (this being an ‘audiences are warned there may be nudity’ performance…). I was interested to note that in SF it’s white trousers and not white shirts that seem de rigeur for ODs. Not sure I approve. Not after Labor Day at any rate.
The last time I saw Salome was the David McVicar Covent Garden production. I adored it. It really got to grips with the deep perversion at the heart of the story in a way that was perhaps surprisingly ‘tasteful’ and, less surprisingly, thoughtful (though without shying away from the obvious in the libretto, or indeed the opportunity for nudity and general debauchery). And Michael was immense. She prowled around the stage like a wild animal and you really just could *not* take your eyes off her. And her voice – good god does she know how to fill a sonic environment. It was a sensual overdose that left me and a good portion of the audience in London that night reeling. Of course as I have discussed here before, she’s had the usual round of ill-informed and quite frankly I suspect “cut n pasted” reviews here in sunny California, cobbled together by people one struggles to accept were actually at the same performance banging on about ‘well when she finishes transitioning from a mezzo her voice might settle’ – the Michael’s equivalent of the Kasarova is mannered meme. A notable exception was Michael Swed in the LA Times – very insightful review that picked up on some cultural politics re. the production that as a Brit I wondered about but am not well placed to comment on.
Now I don’t think even the most ardent Michael fan would argue that she is a technically pure or solid singer. She isn’t. She wobbles around the place a bit. Some of those notes are not quite ’spot on’, especially at the extremes of her range. Even an opera punter like me can spot that. And in both London and San Francisco this meant that sometimes the more demanding bravura tessitura moments (of which there are many in Salome!) get a little hair raising. But this is a maniacal teenage girl caught up in a malevolent environment where the excess stakes just keep getting pushed higher and higher. There were a couple of wild sudden pitch drops that whilst from a purist point of view left a lot to be desired, from a dramatic performance point of view make a whole lot of sense. And there’s the thing with Michael, what you get is performance. Full on, full blooded, ‘here let me grab you by the hair and throw you around the bed stage for a few hours’ kind of performance. She’s the Grace Jones of the opera world. And we got that again here in San Francisco. But it was all just a little… less… than in London. Less aggressive, less transgressive, and ultimately less satisfying. Though there were moments when she blew the jet lag right out my befuddled mind and had me sitting up straight in my seat waiting for the aural equivalent of a good slapping. And as in London the last 15 minutes or so had me holding my breath. But overall this was a significantly less believable Salome for me, and the fault lay not in Michael’s performance but in the strangely denuded production.
I suppose McVicar is a tough act to follow concept wise (and I should add in fairness that I had literally walked off an 11 hour flight, dumped my bags, slapped on some lippy, and hopped in a taxi to the opera house – I was a little jet lagged!) but I really just could not connect with this. And a little scene that unfolded in the row in front of me probably encapsulated the problem I had, and partially explains its roots. But more of that in a bit, first some basic information.
This was the second production for Nicola Luisotti, SF Opera’s latest music director. It was also his first and only shot this season on the podium with a non-Italian opera, the deal with SF Opera being he will conducted all Italian seasons bar one ’special’. Perhaps it’s the Italian tackling a big German piece issue, but he seemed to take on the ‘big Strauss sound’ just a little too enthusiastically. As with the Munich Jenufa this was a production that left some of the singers (though not it must be said Michael) struggling. Of course it’s Strauss, the orchestration is hefty stuff, but it can be taken too far. The night I was there this seemed to particularly affect Kim Begley’s Herod. Only Michael seemed to really have the sheer vocal power needed to cope. I was reminded again that whilst her voice may have some technical imperfections, she really does power above even the biggest orchestra sounds. Stage design felt like someone had ‘a good idea’ -the prison as camera lens – and got stuck there. Again as with Jenufa it really offerred little ‘extra’, nor did it provide a visual distraction during some of the tedious instrumental pieces – even short Strauss can drag on!
Salome Gets Flirty with the Veils, (c) Cory Weaver
The directing was by way of choreographer Seán Curran with additional direction from James Robinson – and I wonder if perhaps Curran’s choreography instincts got in the way a little. There was too much attention focussed on the dance of the seven veils and not enough on the rest of the story. But sadly the dance just felt, well… twee. Adolescent. Don’t frighten the horses. And worst (and most truly perverse) of all – prurient. America has always struck me as being particularly schizophrenic about sex. On the one hand the porn industry is huge, on the other Janet Jackson pops a nipple and the world grinds to a halt. Americans seem to really struggle with frankness around public discourse of sex. And of course Salome isn’t just a discourse about sex, but sex as a manifestation of power and corruption and baseness. About the battle between good (virginity) and evil (sexuality). Now it’s Strauss, it was Germany in the time of Freud, and really though the psycho-babble drivel at the heart of the opera is not to my political or philosophical tastes, this has to be taken on. It’s the heart of the story. You have to engage with it, if only to problematise it. Soft coating, as here in San Francisco, seems to me the real perversion. And of course as a Scot I recognise that regressive soft coating impulse very well, we have it too. In Edinburgh we use the term ‘all fur coat and nae knickers’ – Scots have sex, they just don’t talk about it, ever. And if they do the call it ’sacks’. In a whisper. With a face to indicate distaste at uttering the very word.
Sadly for Salome though this meant that the seven veils was a bit like watching some repressed housefrau trying to ’seduce her man’ having read an article in Cosmo about ‘Ways to Drive him Wild with Desire’. It was just not dirty enough. Which was a huge shock as Nadja Michael has enough sex appeal to stun an elephant under normal circumstances. But this Salome was just not perverse (in a good way) enough, and therefore just not really engaging at any level – sexual or intellectual. Of course Michael being Michael it wasn’t without its pleasures, but it really just did not get the brass ring!
The dance was symptomatic of a whole production that seemed to have been designed to avoid scaring the audience with anything too in your face. And sadly it slipped into cliche a little too often for my tastes. Case in point was the ending, with a clumsy and uncomfortable looking executioner (oh how I longed for the drop dead gorgeous naked body of McVicar’s production – now that was an executioner who knew who to wield a steely length!) creeping cod-dramatically up on Salome and a mis-timed lights out adding to the sense of Salome: The High School production.
As I said, everything was very much built around the dance of the seven veils. Now I always have problems with this. In most productions, as here and as it was for Strauss, this is the dranatic heart of the opera. The moment when the full debauchery of the times is laid (usually literally, if fleetingly) bare. Whilst dramatically the heart for the whole piece (if rather crudely; Strauss wasn’t exactly noted for his firm take on gender politics in the era of psychoanalysis) I always feel that this is where a good director could really begin to skewer and update the politics of Salome.
Let’s not pull any punches here. The woman is about to fuck herself with the severed head of John the Baptist. Yes. It’s shocking. It’s meant to be. The dance of the seven veils starts off as a sexy tease, lots of hints and flashes, but do you really think Salome ended coyly covering her bits, as Michaels was made to do here? Of course she bloody didn’t. This is the point to turn up the perversity volume, not with a quick flash of flesh and a wannabe Lolita caught with knickers down ’shy’ look. This is where Salome does the female with no power equivalent to slapping her dick on the table. Well it would be in my version anyway! This is where Salome really lets Herod have it, grabs him by the balls and shows him exactly why he will send her John’s head on a plate any minute now. As it was, I was left worrying that if she rubbed herself any more vigorously with those veils she was going to have a science experiment hair sticking up moment. And that’s really not what I should be thinking at that point in a Michael’s Salome.
Salome worried she maybe made that shave a little t0o close. (c) Cory Weaver
What would I have done differently? Well for a start – if you are going to flaunt Nadja Michael naked on stage for god’s sake don’t turn it into some tame 50s soft porn tableaux. Salome is (driven) barking mad. She’s using the only thing she has that gives her any power in her perverted and crazy world – her sexuality – to try and manipulate Herod. It’s Soddom for god’s sake!! Why have her standing there coyly covering her breasts and pubic mound? It’s just so false and immature. It’s not truthful. Now I am guessing that there are not that many opera singers around today who would be willing to go full frontal, full monty for Strauss. But I suspect Michael would be one who would, can and could. If London was Michael’s as caged animal released and on the prowl, this was Michael’s as caged animal very firmly still in the cage and made to dress up in a cute little outfit for fear her bits shock the good townsfolk. The director was obviously very fond of the balanced on the bum on the floor, arched back, tits out and toes pointed look (especially same draped with veil). He repeated it over and over. And whist Michael has a fantastic physique and is clearly very, very, fit, this was not sexy stuff. This was sexy as imagined in suburban USA. This was shower gel TV ad territory. This was soft, soft porn. This was Garanca as Carmen, not Kasarova or Antonacci.
But veils aside, for me the real ‘meat’ (excuse the pun) in Salome is the final scene with the severed head. And here that was rather underplayed, well in so far as anything involving Michael could ever be regarded as underplayed. It was almost painful to watch the last 15 minutes where Michael was clearly channelling her wild last 15 minutes in London. But without the final release! Yes there were hints a plenty about exactly how much pleasure John the Baptist’s head was giving her. But no real letting rip. Instead of having the observations on palace life filtered through the dance, I wanted to see someone really take on the issues in Salome in the final scene. Even in Herod’s palace the sight of Salome getting off on a severed head would have had an impact. The mother’s role, the state’s, the religious power base and its involvement in this, all can be seen as the logical outcome of the absence of political balance in this society. Salome is the signifier of political depravity, not sexual depravity. And that’s a message that resonates very profoundly in society even today. Look at the banker’s. Salome fucked herself with the severed head of John the Baptist. The banker’s fuck themselves with the severed head of democracy. And in both cases the crimes are afforded by the perversity of those who stand by appearing good and pious from the front, but go round the back and watch them going at it!
The whole problem was perfectly illustrated by our very own little drama in the stalls in front of me. There sat mommy and her girl, who looked around 14/15 but was quite possibly younger, this being America land of the tennage girls who look freakishly old. I spotted her as we sat down and really wondered what on earth mommy, who looked slightly edgy suburban, but nevertheless firmly suburban, was doing there with girl? Now I’m not saying that a 14 year old could not take and/or appreciate Salome. But this girl really did not look the type. Perfectly coy ‘hints of sexiness that she really had no intention of living up to’ outfit, perfectly coiffed hair. Sitting very upright and attentive. All fine pretty much all the way through till the dance of the seven veils. Mommy started to get a little anxious then – glancing repeatedly at girl. Girl started looking quite fidgety. And I started thinking that the idiot behind me who was rustling sweet wrappers all the way through the bloody production (an opera audience first for me!) was the least of the distractions in the stalls.
By the time the head was lopped mommy was clearly freaking out and girl’s coiffure began rather amusingly to mirror her inner discomfort; without her touching it I watched it quite literally unravel in front of my eyes. As the true meaning of giving Salome head began to be hinted at one could see both mommy and girl were now well and truly out of their comfort zone. To their credit they both stayed the course – girl staring firmly straight ahead and mommy staring at girl. But really – what on earth were they thinking this was? And judging by the look on some of the audience’s faces as they fled the auditorium before the curtain hit the stage they were not alone in their shock. But the only shocking thing about this Salome was how tame it was. How sexless.
It’s like the audience thought they knew what it’s about, thought they could take it. And then discover they really didn’t and couldn’t. And that sums up the production. It thinks it knows what Salome is about. Thinks it can do it. But it really doesn’t and it really didn’t. And the frustrating thing was, I know Michaels does, and did in London. It was the American prurience (in matters political as well as matters sexual) that did for this production. Great as she is, and I really do believe she owns Salome, not even Michael ultimately could make this castrated Salome work.
That said SF Opera are very lucky they have her as she saved the production from being unwatchable. Worth every cent if (like me) you appreciate the sight and sound of one of the world’s most exciting dramatic sopranos. If you are nearby go see her while you can. There are still tickets on sale for Tuesday Oct 27 2009 at 8 pm, Friday Oct 30 2009 at 8 pm , and Sunday Nov 1 2009 at 2 pm.
Though sadly embedded in the dreaded flash viewer so I’ll have to leave you to go poke around the site and find it yourself 
Be warned, the site is a little buggy under MAC OS X Snow Leopard, Firefox fares better than Safari. I’ve mailed the site designer and hopefully they can resolve the odd redirect server problems that currently beset it. But those are minor niggles – the good news is this is a site for the punters who want to know what, when, where. And like to check things out on Youtube. Thank you for giving us a site that exploits the web for us opera lovers fully.
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