Staatsoper Unter den Linden
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| Annika Schlicht (Herodias's Page), Oscar Wilde (Christian Natter), Salome (Aušrine Stundytė) |
Herod – Gerhard Siegel
Herodias – Marina Prudenskaya
Salome – Aušrine Stundytė
Jochanaan – Thomas J. Mayer
Narraboth – Nikolai Schukoff
Herodias’s Page – Annika
Schlicht
Jews – Dietmar Kerschbaum, Ziad
Nehme, Linard Vrielink, Andrés Moreno García, David Oštrek
Nazarenes – Adam Kutny, Ulf
Dirk Mädler
Soldiers – Arttu Kataja,
Dominic Barbiere
A Cappadocian – David Oštrek
A Slave – Corinna Scheurle
Oscar Wilde – Christian Natter
Hans Neuenfels (director)
Philipp Lossau (assistant
director)
Reinhard von der Thannen
(designs)
Kathrin Hauer (assistant stage
designer)
Sommer Ulrickson (choreography)
Stefan Bolliger (lighting)
Henry Arnold (dramaturgy)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Thomas Guggeis (conductor)
‘These Germans: they are
obsessed with sex.’ Such were the puzzling words I heard from an irate
Frenchman in the queue behind me for the cloakroom at the close of this
performance of Salome. Far be it to
suggest that ‘the French’ might also have a reputation for an interest in such
matters, but I could not help but wonder whether, if he were weary of at least
implicit sexual context onstage, Salome
were really the opera for him. As it happens, Hans Neuenfels’s excellent new
production, provocative in the best sense, is far more concerned with the
absence of sex, sexual repression, the ultimate inability to perform, and,
following Oscar Wilde in particular here, the aestheticisation of such
problems, than with sexual display or fulfilment. Prudishness and aversion take
many forms, however, as Neuenfels also suggests.
For Wilde is placed,
increasingly literally, centre stage. Not having looked properly at the cast
list, let alone the programme, beforehand, I had not realised that this would
be so. Instead, as intended, it gradually became clear that the actor, whose
role I could not quite place, either in the work or more laterally, was Wilde himself. The
neon sign, ‘Wilde is coming’, had announced it clearly enough,’ I realised –
just as Jochanaan announced one who would follow him. Not that the accomplished, mesmerisingly versatile Christian Natter, in this entirely mute role, is made
up to resemble the playwright: we are, let us give thanks, at a level of drama
beyond the caricature of the impressionist. Eventually the green carnation
gives the game away: the only instance throughout the entire evening of a
colour on stage that is not black, white, or red (typically sharp, meaningfully
coloured designs by longtime Neuenfels collaborator, Reinhard von der Thannen).
But before that, a world of Victorian sexual repression, that of the society
from which Wilde sprang, has been constructed. Its imperialism is nodded to, in
very British Empire uniforms for the soldiers: let us play at governing the
Middle East, with catastrophic consequences to be seen to the present day and
beyond.
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| Jochanaan (Thomas J. Mayer), Herodes (Gerhard Siegel), Herodias (Marina Prudenskaya) |
More to the point, John the
Baptist, foreteller of Christianity – perhaps, in this reading, more so than
Christ himself, certainly more of a hypocritical moral fanatic – is encased in
what Neuenfels calls ‘a phallus or rocket of indignation, a constant appeal to
obdurate, concealed, packed away carnality. This results in a constant ban, a
threat.’ The traditional cistern is gone, but as Henry Arnold, Neuenfels’s
dramaturge points out, Strauss wrote to Ernst von Schuch, conductor of the
first performance, that Jochanaan ‘should be understandable without a voice
pipe. Maybe he could sing through a gaze veil (a hole in the wall, invisible to
the audience) with his head two feet above the floor so that he sees the
conductor and can sing directly to the audience. This is very important.’ Take
that, alleged ‘respecters’ of ‘the composer’s intentions’. What is it that our proto-ayatollah
objects to? In a sense, it does not really matter, for such things are more
matters of opportunism than anything else, as the ‘religious Right’ backers of
Donald Trump testify more clearly than ever. What Neuenfels opens up is the
possibility of a more thoroughgoing exploration of gender and orientation.
Salome herself becomes a significantly gender-bending figure, her absurd, ultra-stylised
(which is, crucially, to say aestheticised) Victorian bustle transposed onto
others, Wilde and Jochanaan chief amongst them. Who dresses up? Who dresses
whom? With what intent?
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| Wilde, Salome |
When Herod commands, or rather requests, ‘Dance for me, Salome’, does he too
want as much of an aesthetic as a sexual experience? Do we err to distinguish
the two? (Given recent reports of sexual abuse by conductors, the question
seems especially relevant now.) He has his own reasons, as such ‘immoral’
rulers tend to, in many ways far less objectionable than those who loudly
trumpet their ‘morality’; he is weak more than anything else, as signalled by
Herodias’s theft of and refusal to return his ring of kingship. Make of that
gesture, so rich in symbolism political and sexual, what you will. Meanwhile Wilde,
increasingly confident, perhaps as in his play, in his denunciation of
denunciation, allows his homosexuality to become clearer – and, more important
still, to acquire greater dramatic agency. When he dances, as angel of death,
with Salome, a game of omnisexual sadomasochism unfolds, the poet’s leather
harness-corset (which?) and what he does with it speaking a thousand words (back at least as
far as Neuenfels’s brilliant Salzburg Così
fan tutte, a work Strauss, a true Mozart connoisseur, so adored).
But, in a world of such
repression, what does one put in the place of sexual freedom? Aestheticism, of
course, in Wilde’s case – and, surely, in Strauss’s too, throughout his career.
Ever the student of Nietzsche rather than Wagner, Strauss believed in art above
all else: indeed, perhaps only in art. Thus the constructions we place on
stage, and the very constructions we make of them in our minds too, play their
part in a similar game, perhaps even identical, at the very least related –
depending, most likely, upon who we are, even how we feel on the night. Salome –
sometimes a girl, sometimes a more progressive, perhaps older, woman with
something of the caricatured lesbian to her, sometimes perhaps a surrogate for
the young man Wilde, on and off stage, may be seeking – focuses her own
aesthetics upon her construction of Jochanaan, who sometimes resembles what she
thinks she wants, yet in other respects could hardly be more distant. The
pent-up rage in which she smashes one of the multiple, ‘beautiful’ busts
arranged on stage for her delectation following the dance is both a genuine act
and a ‘work of art’, or at least an aspiration thereto, in itself. Has anyone
learned of ‘love’ then? It seems unlikely. We have nevertheless learned a good
deal about the lengths to which many of us will go in order to prevent
ourselves and others from doing so.
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| Wilde, Salome |
Thomas Guggeis, originally
scheduled to conduct but one of these performances as assistant to Christoph
von Dohnányi, ended up conducting them all. He did a very good job, the
Staatskapelle Berlin seemingly very happy to play under his leadership. The
weird musical world in which dances do not dance and non-dances do came across
with considerable dramatic power. I have heard more outrageously, or at least
phantasmagorically, coloured performances, but no single performance is likely
in itself to respond equally to the manifold possibilities of Strauss’s score.
There can be little doubt that this young conductor is a musician of great
accomplishment, nor that we shall be hearing much more from him. What an
opportunity, though, to have fallen to him!
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| Jochanaan |
If tonal beauty were your
thing, then Aušrine Stundytė’s Salome would most likely not be for you. Is the
problematisation of such priorities, though, not one of the dramatic themes, at
least possibly, of work and production? She certainly entered into the role
with dramatic gusto and considerable stage presence. One heard, moreover, many
more of the words, words moreover imbued with true verbal potency, than will
often be the case. Thomas Johannes Mayer’s Jochanaan likewise navigated intriguingly
between such polarities, offering a solution, however provisional, suited to his character and his portrayal. Looking at the royal couple from the other side of
that (doubtless too) crude opposition, Gerhard Siegel and Marina Prudenskaya
offered formidably sung performances, more so than one will often hear, without
sacrifice to the drama. Nikolai Schukoff’s astute, enigmatic, vocally ravishing
Narraboth was perhaps the single most impressive performance of all.
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| Narraboth (Nikolai Shukoff), Salome, Jochanan Images: Monika Rittershaus |
Indeed, at the time, one rather
resented Narraboth’s being elbowed aside by Wilde – which is surely the point.
And yet soon we did not, for criticism of society, his, Salome’s, and ours, becomes
all the more necessary. Until the drama, musical rather than scenic, less
closes than stops. It could be Wozzeck,
almost, except in its aestheticism, it is anything but. Wozzeck does not die of boredom; Salome does, but whose? Patriarchy remains, but do we care - truly care, as opposed to claiming to?