There may be better voices singing this role or that, but this is the defining visual record of Salome. Stratas' interpretation is brilliant. I just watched the YouTube video of the final moments: the camera inches from her face, glancing away for a bit of fine stage business by Herodias, then back -- tears streaming down my face. To understand Salome, we must feel some empathy for the title character. Stratas' Salome is not a monster; she is the demanding ego in each of us, given what she demands and not, it seems, careful enough what she wished for.
There, I took a breath. Varnay is nothing short of brilliant, giving depth to a role that could be a walk-on, and Riegel is a suitably disgusting Herod. The Jokanaan -- I can't even remember who he is -- is weak, the only complaint I have about the production. The film uses him well, but there is never a sense -- as there must be for the drama to work -- that he and Salome are evenly matched.
This film demonstrates that opera is ripe for CGI. Stratas could never have sung Salome on stage, and probably Monserrat Caballe never should have. Will it be in my lifetime, a film of Salome with Jon Vickers singing Herod, Welitsch Salome, Varnay or Rysanek Herodias, and Bryn Teufel as Jokanaan, while a delicate dark sylph mimes the title role? I hope so, but meantime, this recording will do just fine.
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Circumstances gave me the opportunity to see the Berlin/Mafitano/Estes Salome on consecutive nights with this one last weekend, and if you are wavering between them, don't. The Berlin Mafitano is so inferior that the difference is laughable. It is, first of all, a videotape of a play performance, not a film. The Stratas production confines itself to the stage set, but it exploits the strengths of film brilliantly, with closeups (the shot of the tears streaming down Stratas' face toward the end of The Dance) and brilliantly composed shots like the one where Herodias slowly replaces Salome in the frame as the camera pans, montage to create excitement, and an arsenal of tools to make the never-convincing Dance appealing, artistic, and even vaguely erotic. In this production, you don't have to check the libretto to remember that Jokanaan seals his fate not by insulting Herodias but by repeating his hateful screed at Salome from inside the cistern. ("He didn't say your name, dear," Herod says to placate Herodias. That's because he isn't talking about Herodias any more; he's moved on to younger stuff.)
More than this, the Berlin Mafitano suffers from what I think of as the German aesthetic disease -- a love of depravity for its own sake. That element is welcome in Wilde's original, which is a nasty, leering, misogynistic bit of onanism best filmed by Ken Russell. Strauss and his librettist (Hedwig Lachmann) are not telling that simpleminded story. The Berlin aesthetic can't see past it. There is a deliberate shock element in the Berlin production, typified by the full beaver climax to The Dance (which is not so much a dance as a series of Freudian calisthetics, and six of the seven veils are big hankies hanging from Mafitano's leave-nothing-to-the-imagination dance smock). But the hits keep coming. The Kiss is a gross carp nuzzle. The production seems as set on revolting as a Penthouse Caligula.
But this is not a review of the Berlin production. There are now four or five DVD recording of Salome. If your interest is seeing an opera singer nekkid, go with the Maria Ewing. She's the weakest singer but the best dancer and convincingly youthful. (Or track down the Deidra Palmour clips on YouTube of a Florida production and settle for a G-string and the best choreography I've ever seen for The Dance.) If what you want is pictures to go with the music then frankly, you are out of luck. There is no video version to match the audio of Nilsson, Welitsch, Studer, Neilson, Rysanek, or Marton. The pictures in the Met/Mattila production are one of those what-were-they-thinking productions, in which the action takes place in 1930 on what seems to be a cruise ship; the Nadja Michael production is visually impressive but Michael's voice is not up to the demands of the role. All are videotaped productions, not films, and it shows.
Teresa Stratas did not have the Jagdpanzer voice of a Birgit Nilsson (the only recording I know of, with Georg Solti and, I think, Jon Vickers) that comes close to the queen of Salomes, Ljuba Welitsch -- still in print if you dig for it). But with the invisible breaks that film permits, Stratas stays at top form for her harrowing 90 minutes. And what is more, she is a fine actress. The Mafitano productions (there are actually two recordings, with the difference that Simon Estes sings Jokanaan in Berlin, Terfel in Covent Garden) are ham-fisted, from the abstract sets to the bug-eyed madness of Salome. The Berlin proceeds seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are performing in our laps: What are we to make of Salome's going on and on about Simon Estes 'ivory' skin? Did no one notice that in extreme closeup, Mafitano looks her age, not Salome's?
I've seen more productions of Salome than I can count, beginning (I think) with Dame Josephine Barstow and including a dozen unseen recordings. I can imagine a better production of Salome than the Stratas, but I doubt if I'll ever see one.
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- Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2009
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- David ErskineReviewed in the United Kingdom on July 7, 2015
Teresa Stratas makes a perfect Salome and this is a good way to "get into" Richard Strauss.
