Director Claus Guth gives the biblical story – already filtered through the beautiful and strange imagination of Oscar Wilde’s play – a psychologically perceptive Victorian-era setting, rich in symbolism and subtle shades of darkness, light, and shadow, as Strauss’ one-act tragedy receives its first new production at The Met in twenty years.
Narraboth (Piotr Buszewski) admires the princess Salome (Elza van den Heever) and unable to resist her, allows her to descend into the cell holding Jochanaan (Peter Mattei). She is fascinated by the prophet’s body and begs for his kiss, but he rejects her, and she returns to the palace above.
Herod (Gerhard Siegel) appears and offers her food and wine, but she refuses. Jochanaan cries out from below against Salome’s mother, Herodias (Michelle DeYoung), who demands that Herod turn the prophet over to the Jews, but he refuses, maintaining that the holy man has seen God.
When Herod asks Salome to dance for him she refuses but when he promises to give her anything she wants, she makes him swear to keep his word and agrees. She dances for her stepfather, and he is horrified when, with her mother’s prompting, she asks for Jochanaan’s head on a silver platter. He offers her riches, half of his kingdom, even the holy curtain of the temple, but Salome insists he fulfil his oath, and he finally relents.
Salome descends into the cell where she declares her love for the severed head, caressing it and kissing the prophet’s dead lips passionately. Horrified, Herod orders his soldiers to kill her before collapsing to the ground.
Guth’s Victorian era setting is inspired as it reflects a time of repression and prudishness, under the surface of which eroticism and scandal bubbled away. Set designer Etienne Press and lighting designer Olaf Freese capture the turmoil of Salome’s childhood abuse as we observe a confused state of affairs and repressed childhood memories. The journey down to the cell mirrors the descent into hell but the space she arrives it is white – holy, virginal – although littered with children’s toys with Jochanaan a symbol for her lost and traumatised childhood.
On the surface, the scenes are darker, matched by Ursula Kudrna’s costume design where Salome’s white costume hints at her childhood innocence and Herodias’ wholly contrasting red costume and hair are redolent of her continued frenzied sexual behaviour. This contrast between dark and light is layered further through projection from rocafilm/Roland Horvath where the wind and whirl of insects suggest judgement from above.
Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts and from the off, the massive score is equally exotic, iconoclastic, and compelling with a harmony and tonality that is literally exploding. He maintained balance throughout as the orchestra embodied the eeriness of the score amidst the overriding chaos and particularly coming to the fore with their sensuous playing of the famous Dance of the Seven Veils. Choreographed by Sommer Ulrickson, six younger versions of Salome (Marion Fleur Antonio; Kate Lellos Doherty; Hardy; Vienna Judith Martinez; Willow McConnaughy; and Louisa Pancoast) dance between Herod and perhaps her father, both wearing Ram-like Egyptian deity heads, As we observe the developing abuse that the current Salome endeavours to defend them from. These younger versions appear silently at other points during the opera, hauntingly looking on and helping us to understand Salome’s mental state, with their re-appearance together opposed by corresponding silver platters reminding me of the Medusa.
The role of Salome is one of the most complex and demanding in the operatic repertoire with the soprano on stage for almost two hours without a break, portraying a teenage girl whilst singing some of the most dramatic lines ever written. On the whole, van den Heever delivered, demonstrating her range and holding her own against the orchestra, with her lighter vocal at the start evolving into deeper, darker tones as the action unfolded, with her closing 20-minute scene captivating.
Mattei’s vocal begins and ends from off-stage but his strong portrayal of the prophet when he we meet him is fearless and fearsome with his darker expressive tone rising in response to Salome’s potential sins.
Siegel dominates the stage as Herod, with a strong vocal and illustrating the contrasts of his character between mystical knowledge and explicit vulgarity and enthrallment with the power the holy man may possess.
DeYoung has little to do other than pose but from that position she vocally conveyed how much she despised her husband, her torment at the warning cries form Jochanaan, and that this was a woman who come what may, would survive.
Buszewski captured the forthrightness and passion of Narraboth before adopting a more tortured tone as he realises he cannot win over Salome.
There is good support from a wider cast with special mention for Tamara Mumford as the Page and the soloists portraying the Jews (Billie Bruley; Thomas Capobianco; Alex Boyer; Bernard Holcomb; and Robert Pomakov).
Reviewer: Mark Davoren
Reviewed: 17th May 2025
North West End UK Rating: