|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
West Bay takes one of the more provocative creations in opera and gives it a grand treatment. The resultant performance resembles an acid trip married to an absurdist horror film with a great soundtrack. It’s a wild, wild ride.
Much of the wildness originates in Strauss’s score, which flies through key changes and uses dissonance and atonal passages that were, in 1905, far ahead of the curve. Conductor José Luis Moscovich and a larger-than-usual orchestra (literally packed into the wings) handled the challenge with aplomb, particularly in Strauss’s inventive use of woodwinds. The visual I would offer is a gurgling pot of musical magma, bursting forth at regular intervals.
And there’s a lot to burst forth about. Created from Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name about biblical characters, the drama focuses on the evil king Herod, who openly lusts for his stepdaughter Salome, and is willing to do just about anything — including, say, executing a left-wing agitator — to feed his unquenchable desires. (I’m sorry, does this seem familiar?)
The opera is hugely dependent on its title character, and in this category West Bay has hit the jackpot. Joanna Parisi brings a dramatic soprano so vibrant and powerful it almost seems otherworldly. At the same time, she proves capable of pulling back to sterling pianissimos, perhaps during an intimate rendezvous with a severed head.
Her presence, also, seems extraterrestrial, fueled by Salome’s sociopathic desires. The Dance of the Seven Veils is a huge demand for any opera singer; Parisi and choreographer Daiane Lopes da Silva devise a dance that makes use of Parisi’s natural appeal and quirky moves that match her character’s insanity. At one point, she drapes her voluminous blonde hair across the stage floor and pokes her hands through it like puppets. It sounds just plain weird, but it’s an arresting image. (The nudity factor is somewhere around high PG-13.)
A small distraction to Parisi’s performance is her habit of swimming into her entrances, as if she were using her body to count off beats. This is generally an opera no-no, but it seems to fit in with Salome’s dancer mentality, and really I don’t care, as long as that magnificent voice keeps coming out.
Baritone Nathaniel Sullivan offers a strong presence as John the Baptist, known here as Iokanaan. His forceful rejections of Salome’s adorations turn them instantly into insults. As Salome’s mother Herodias, mezzo Laure de Marcellus conveys all of the queen’s desperate frustrations, watching her victories dissolve in the wake of her husband’s insane lust. This builds to a stunning forte and then a shout that silences the court and sends a thrill through the audience. (Strauss’ score is so packed with sound that most of the dramatic moments come in silences.)
Tenor Will Upham brings a calm, lyric tone to Herod, an effective contrast and a reflection of the king’s weaselly personality. This is most effective when Herod realizes what Salome is asking for as a fee for her dance. Frightened by Iokanaan’s prophecies, Herod tries to moonwalk out of his grandiose offerings.
The “five jews” scene is a nice bit of comic relief, as Herod’s theological counselors squabble about religion and their prisoner/prophet’s fate. And it was a pleasure to hear Kirk Eichelberger’s resounding bass as the Fifth Jew.
In general, the opera offers more laugh lines than one might expect. This most often arrives in the form of people acting as if everything is normal when absolutely nothing is normal. Herod slips on the blood next to the body of suicidal captain Narraboth (Brian Skoog) and complains to his staff about their shoddy housekeeping. Given the opera’s origins as a Wilde play, perhaps these morbid laughs shouldn’t be a surprise.
The best thing about stage director Richard Harrell’s work is that I didn’t really notice it – the story came through as naturally and directly as it should. The projection work by Peter Crompton added greatly to the phantasmagorical feel, phasing the moon from eerie silver to blood red to drifting lumps of lava lamp fire as the evening progressed. As for Iokanaan’s severed head, it was effectively gory but much lighter than a real head. But that’s all right; we were all pretty creeped out.
The opera is in German with English supertitles, and is a one-act running 95 minutes.
West Bay Opera presents “Salome” Feb. 21, 7 p.m. and Feb. 22, 2 p.m. at the Lucie Stern Theater, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. Tickets are $54-$140., 650-424-9999 or wbopera.org/salome-2026
