NEW YORK — “What do we do while we wait for the world to end?” trumpeted the advance press for Salome, which was given a new English-language production by Heartbeat Opera. By performance time, this overwrought copy had taken on unexpected resonance in a newly fraught political landscape as Heartbeat launched nine performances at The Space at Irondale in Brooklyn (seen Feb. 6). This stunning low-budget production with a dramatically reduced orchestra had as much impact as any mainstage Salome production I’ve seen, and was made even more powerful by the intimacy of the 200-seat venue.
Salome is the notoriously lurid story of the teenage Judean princess who danced naked for her stepfather, Herod, and in return demanded the head of John the Baptist (Jochanaan), jailed for having criticized Salome’s mother, after he rejected Salome’s advances. Oscar Wilde’s scandalous play was only performed in 1896 after three years of resistance to its decadent content, but it eventually found favor in German-speaking countries. Richard Strauss’ setting of the German translation premiered in Dresden at the end of 1905 and was an immediate success. Within two years, it had been given in over 50 theaters, though it continued to encounter resistance in Anglo-Saxon countries.
After Salome’s 1907 U.S. premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, the remainder of the run was canceled. Critic W. J. Henderson decried the “strange story projecting principally the abnormal psychologies of a feminine pervert and a man tormented by perpetual and undefined terrors,” and Henry Krehbiel reported that “Salome disgusts its hearers.” The opera wasn’t performed again at the Met until 1934, by which time it was widely recognized as a masterpiece.
The opera’s mix of offhand violence and kinky sex remains so raw that it really didn’t need alteration to make it relatable to a contemporary audience. Unusually for Heartbeat, director Elizabeth Dinkova and artistic director and conductor Jacob Ashworth left the original 100-minute run time nearly intact. Costumes and minimal sets were generically modern. To emphasize the role of obsessive watching in modern life, Dinkova introduced cameras and video screens. Jochanaan as a constant presence in a transparent box onstage — instead of a disembodied voice singing from a hole in the ground — gave the audience a cinematic point of view on the sordid drama. Salome’s yearning for Jochanaan to truly see her was emphasized by gazing eyes blinking on the video screens as she tries in vain to capture his gaze. (Sets by Emona Stoykova, lighting by Emma Deane, video and sound design by John Gasper.)
The black-box theater was configured with two ranks of seating flanking the playing space in the center of the room. The orchestra was arrayed against one wall, and across the floor stood a bank of video screens and a control panel where the guard Narraboth and the Page surveyed the property. Jochanaan’s prison cell, a glass cage, stood in front of the orchestra, and action played out around the box. Narraboth watched the video screens that showed in turn Herod’s banquet, the prison cell, and the moon. One video screen periodically showed an offstage room where the Jews and Nazarenes argued theology — a tidy way to dispense with seven of the 17 original characters while acknowledging their existence in the score.
Mike Eubanks’ modern costumes reflected the characters’ social hierarchy. Narraboth and the Page wore white shirts and dark pants or skirt, like waiters (the Page was a woman rather than a young boy). Jochanaan wore a tattered T-shirt and boxer shorts, his near-nakedness suggesting both physical and emotional vulnerability. His guard wore camo fatigues and carried a rifle. Herod and Herodias were elegantly dressed for host duties in bright yellow, the king further festooned with a ceremonial sash and a Burger King crown. Salome wore a fluffy skirt of rainbow-hued layers of tulle over a leotard and sneakers. After Narraboth’s suicide, he returns briefly as a kind of ghost wearing tattered white, suggesting the bird of death hallucinated by Herod.
For all the theatrics, the most impressive aspect of the production was the transformation of Strauss’ gargantuan score into a chamber opera. Music director Dan Schlosberg reduced the enormous orchestra to eight players of single-reed instruments and two very busy percussionists. Clarinets and other solo winds figure heavily throughout Strauss’ often pointillistic score, and even without strings and brass, the wind band filled the space and captured the original sonorities astonishingly well, with even a suggestion of the era’s emerging cabaret style. At times I missed the transparent sheen of strings, but Strauss’ filigree of themes emerged clearly from the dense ensemble. It was the most skillful musical adaptation I’ve heard from this company over the last 10 years.
Heartbeat’s worthy vocal ensemble was anchored by soprano Summer Hassan’s Salome. The title role famously calls for the voice of an Isolde in the body of a teenager, and Hassan, petite and moving with youthful energy, deployed a sumptuous voice of lyrical brilliance and impressive stamina. The mellifluous baritone Nathaniel Sullivan’s very human Jochanaan was young and comely, fanatical in his religious devotion and touched, even conflicted, by Salome’s seduction efforts. As Herod, Patrick Cook applied a plangent tenor and a good dose of madness to his portrayal of the lust-addled king. Manna K. Jones was a steely-sounding and imperiously bitchy Herodias. Tenor David Morgans’ Narraboth, callow and reedy-voiced, was countered by Melina Jaharis’ lush Page. As the Soldier, Jeremy Harr had a resonant bass that I look forward to hearing again.
Oh, and the infamous “Dance of the Seven Veils”? Salome’s tiered skirt teased at a gradual dismantling of those layers, but instead it was Herod who enthusiastically stripped almost to the buff (including toupee) and ended by ravishing Salome against the video desk. In a final twist, after Salome’s monologue and sickening kiss of the bloody head, the Page took decisive command in the unconventional denouement.
Salome continues through Feb. 16. For information and tickets go here.
