Salomé on Tiran’s Platter

The Tale of the Princess of Judea and the Seven Veils: a premiere of the year at the Israeli Opera

It is not a premiere of the year, it is rather a premiere of the century – there has not been a better “Salomé” at any opera house (at least out of those I have seen, and they are not few by far). Add to that it is our domestic, white and tekhelet, production, and there is every reason to be proud.

Director Itay Tiran’s cosmos is inhabited by characters who have wandered in from Tim Burton’s universe, Luc Besson’s fifth element, and Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk galaxy. Galilee, a manmade planet (stage designer is Eran Azmon), is home to graceless creatures who can glow in the dark. They live looking up to the Earth which is kind of a fetish for them. It is not surprising therefore that appearing from the womb of the Earth is a handsome giant of a man with very long black hair and a white beard, someone to easily lose one’s head about and someone… to get his head chopped off, – John the Baptist.

The aliens have their freaks and their angels. Narraboth, Captain of the Guard, is one. His forearms, supposedly in place of the missing wings, are glowing from unrequited love for the Judean princess. Others have other parts glowing; some even have crosses glowing on their chests.  Plates glow, too, those the meal will be served on, not the platter for John’s head; the dishes served to Herod at his birthday feast also glow – here he is guzzling something with a fluffy tail, then proceeding to extra-long alien worms.

Unlike static productions of “Salomé” (nothing doing – one has to honour the three unities – of action, of time and of place), here everything seems to be moving somewhere and turning into something, just like in Alice Through the Looking Glass – the Rabbit Hole below, the Black Hole above – in the sky, in the outer space.

Holes and burrows are ideally round, as round as a perfect circle formed by Herod’s soldiers and court around the circumference that used to be the Earth; the strange moon is round, the strange moon which is like a mad woman who is seeking everywhere for lovers. All the characters have to move in circles in their maze of a planet; their planet, like ours, must be round, too. Ours, however, will never be able to bend so gracefully.

A new Israeli production of Strauss' masterpiece directed by Itay Tiran, aesthetist and decadent, is cosmically high-tech and equipped with cutting-edge technologies – cyberpunk all over, never mind ancient Judea. Utterly exquisite Oscar Wilde style none the less; Artaud’s alchemist theatre, refinement of the spirit. Tiran and his team’s sci-fi gets under your skin and laser beams through your body. Incredible lighting design by Avi Yona Bueno (Bambi) renders the globe of the Earth resplendent in every existing colour and hue; likewise, Orna Smorgonski’s outlandish costumes are very becoming to the aliens.

The Earth’s interior here is like the interior of the Universe. The Earth rises over the alien planet and becomes the Moon, the virgin Cybele, who, as the drama unfolds, surrenders her virginity and blushes with shame (then becomes red as blood). No sun shines on that planet, only the moon; the planet is most likely not within the Solar system.  

“How beautiful is the Princess Salomé to-night!” – Narraboth annunciates in Robert McPherson’s high tenor. Jokanaan’s deep hollow voice reverberates from the deep of the earth (from the deep of the Earth, rather) – when on an alien planet, he will sing in Daniel Sumegi’s rich bass-baritone, quite convincing for a prophet and his truths. The Australian-born singer appears in solo parts quite frequently in our country, but this time especially well. Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee (a different Herod, not Herod the Great, but only his good-for-nothing son) with a bulging belly, supported by his entourage and looking like an octopus with dangling tentacles, is a horror of a creature. American tenor Chris Merritt is so masterfully performing the hysterical role of Herod that the belly is no obstacle. Very Burtonian Herodias sounds very much fantasy-like, too – wonderful Israeli mezzo-soprano Edna Prochnik makes this small role prominent and full of volume.

Plus, certainly, the heavenly singing of Salomé. The title character, who, according to Richard Strauss, was a “16-year-old with the voice of an Isolde capable of overpowering a big orchestra” was sung by a young Swede, Elisabet Strid, small and fragile, with almost a childish body, for whom the extreme tessitura was not a big deal. Her voice was incredibly easily gliding between the most challenging bends of Salomé’s part – here a filigree silver light, there a dark-register flicker, there a blast-it-all blue flame when uttering an ecstatic final “I kissed thy mouth, Jokanaan.” Each register yielding a gamut of finest dynamic inflexions and inner expressiveness: not a psychotic princess but a naïve and stubborn Lolita with silver hair heeding the Baptist’s prophecies, a bored nymphet, а lewd monster with a heavenly voice and feline plastique. (Elisabet Strid, by the way, is a well-recognised Wagnerian singer who has already sung Brünhilde, Sieglinde, Senta, and her namesake Elisabeth from “Tannhäuser.”)

In the irreally beautiful Dance of the Seven Veils the operatic diva becomes snake-armed as diva Plavalaguna but the trick here is that, according to choreographer Renanna Raz’ idea,  the dance is performed by the Veils, initially of the unclear gender. Eventually, they turn out to be seven agile thin-torsoed youths from the king’s entourage mirroring the seven deadly sins of the title character, a knot of snakes, hair of John the Baptist. And Salomé turns into the Chosen One from the “Rite of Spring,” the one for the Great Sacrifice, which makes you respond differently to her kissing the severed head, to the severed head then appearing on the shoulders of a courtier whose arms are winding round the blood-smeared body of the lustful princess, and take for granted the alien soldiers eventually killing not Salomé, as in the original play, but Herod.  

Over a hundred years ago Richard Strauss felt that orchestral music may give up the ornate fin de siècle manifestations and began writing bitter dramatic poems. In his “scherzo with a fatal conclusion” the characters are singing like breathing and speaking, like whispering, roaring and screaming. The emancipation of the dissonance, the hugely expanded orchestra, the extremely difficult vocal parts, the sensuous eroticism of the Orient, and the symbolist morbidity of modernism are all there.   

Dan Ettinger, the Music Director of the Israeli Opera, feels Strauss deeply from the first to the last note revealing the grimness and beauty of the score, its enchanting sinfulness. He let the players play their marvellous chilly soli achieving a nearly chamber sound from the powerful orchestra. The orchestra therefore sounded very refined impressing the audience with minute colour shades and perfect alignment with the visuals.

The obvious conclusion to suggest itself is that Tiran and his team have found the only right key to the Strauss-Wilde symbolist masterpiece, have shown it in the only right light and have convinced the audience that the Second Reality is there to believe. Finding the right words to describe it is much more difficult – it is simply too good for words.    

P.S. The Israeli-made alien Salomé should not only be shown across this best of all possible worlds; a couple of its stem cells should be frozen, put in a time capsule and stored at the right temperature. It could very well be that our sapient ancestors will appreciate it.

Photos by Yossi Zwecker

At The Israeli Opera, Tel Aviv, until 22 January.