Salome: Man könnte meinen, sie tanzt

"Salome with the Head of John the Baptist"
Aubrey Beardsley

Richard Strauss' masterpiece of desire dangerously thwarted, and still more dangerously indulged, was brought by the Cleveland Orchestra to Carnegie Hall on Thursday in an eagerly-awaited performance. In addition to the powerful Jochanaan of Eric Owens, the evening boasted the Salome of Nina Stemme, sensual and searingly intense. The orchestra, under the leadership of Franz Welser-Möst, gave a performance of both beauty and power. The sound of the Cleveland forces was invariably beautiful, lushly, even obscenely so. The warm, shimmering clarity of the strings was a pleasure; the brass and woodwinds were both strong. What I missed--and I may be in a minority here--was a sense of Unheimlichkeit, an orchestral tension reflecting the mood of impending doom articulated by the Page, and later by Herod himself. Still, the tension escalated with entry of Salome, and ignited with on-stage confrontation (if one can call it that when the participants aren't looking at one another) of the princess and Jochanaan. My desire for more sounds to creep down the spine and chill the blood may be a matter of personal taste. I was on edge throughout the final scene, with its beautiful tapestry of sound disrupted by unsettling eruptions of percussion and shivers in the woodwinds. The dance of the seven veils was pulse-quickening, and the orchestra did summon brutal violence for the crashing, magnificent finale.

Věc Makropulos

The plot of Janáček's Makropulos Case is driven by intrigues legal, historical, and--not least--sexual. The Met's current revival of the 1926 opera is powered by a performance of radiant intensity by Karita Mattila. Elijah Moshinsky's 1996 production is sleek and effective, with Art Deco lines to the claustrophobic lawyer's office, a self-satirizing sphinx backstage at the opera, and (seen above) a sleek apartment which dissolves in the denouement. Central to the production was the image of the diva, and the question of how she is seen by others and herself. Jiří Bělohlávek led the Met orchestra in an account which seemed to emphasize romantic sweep and mysteriously shimmering detail. I speak (Really Shameful Confession) from a position of almost complete ignorance of the score, but I savored the brio and sensuality of the performance.

Il dolce suono mi colpì

I went to Tuesday's performance of Lucia di Lammermoor for the sake of the singing, but the quality of the performances from the four principals surpassed my expectations.  Even in a production which didn't give them much help, I thought they also each managed to give a striking dramatic portrayal as well.  Despite some inconsistent conducting and the tragic absence of a glass harmonica (beautifully played flute solo, but I want my eerie esoteric instrument, please!) Donizetti's bel canto masterpiece shone.  As far as Mary Zimmerman's production goes, I think a stylized visual vocabulary based on the tropes of Gothic literature is actually a neat idea for Lucia, and the mixture of exaggerating certain elements (see the moon, above) with naturalism didn't strike me as too jarring (pictures here.)  However, and this is a not inconsiderable criticism, I didn't feel the production gave much support to the dramatic arc of the plot or the inner life of the characters; the stand-and-sing syndrome had a tendency to manifest itself.  The production did leave space for the characters to have inner life, and the two final scenes were, I thought, superior to the rest of the production in this respect, with Edgardo's death scene visually echoing Lucia's madness very movingly.