 |
| Images: Monika Rittershaus Oscar Wilde (Christian Natter), Salome (Aušrine Stundytė) |
Herod – Vincent Wolfsteiner
Herodias – Marina Prudenskaya
Salome – Aušrine Stundytė
Jochanaan – Thomas J. Mayer
Narraboth – Peter Sonn
Herodias’s Page – Annika
Schlicht
Jews – Ziad Nehme, Michael
Smallwood, Matthew Peña, Andrés Moreno Garcia, David Oštrek
Nazarenes – Adam Kutny, Ulf
Dirk Mädler
Soldiers – Arttu Kataja, Erik
Rosenius
A Cappadocian – David Oštrek
A Slave – Ireene Ollino
Oscar Wilde – Christian Natter
Guards – Ernesto Amico, Allen
Boxer, Nikos Fragkou, Jonathan Heck, Maximilian Reisinger, Tom-Veit Weber
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)
Manipulation lies at the heart
of Richard Strauss’s art. One might argue that it lies at the heart of all art;
there would be a strong case to be made for that. However, there is something
particular about Straussian manipulation. In some ways not dissimilar to that
of Puccini—both composers are expert at pressing particular emotional buttons
and having many listeners enjoy such manipulation in full knowledge that they
are being manipulated—it differs in the extraordinary level of technical
sophistication and, often if not always, in the nested levels of knowing
reflexion-in-contrivance. Artifice is good, then: perhaps, after Nietzsche,
more in opposition to ‘bad’ than to ‘evil’. For Strauss, as Salome makes abundantly clear, is no
more a Christian, perhaps even less willing to admit of metaphysical transcendence,
than Nietzsche, of whom he had been an avid and discerning reader.
 |
| Salome and Wilde |
Manipulation lies at the heart
of Salome too; it lies also at the
heart of Hans Neuenfels’s production, which, having seen when new last year, I was keen to see again. What I think came across
still more strongly than last time—this may just have been me—was the central
character’s awakening to that manipulation and, concomitantly, to her ability
to manipulate. Such was a signal achievement for Aušrine Stundytė, showing
herself every inch a singing actress, throwing everything into a performance that,
rightly, was not always pretty, not always to be kept within bounds, very much
a force of nature: trying, testing, both winning and losing. Working with
Neuenfels’s staging—for which we should also understand Reinhard von der
Thannen’s striking designs, Sommer Ulrickson’s choreography, and Henry Arnold’s
thoughtful and provocative dramaturgy—we saw and heard from Stundytė a Salome
led to self-discovery and ultimately to tragedy not only by Strauss but verbally
and visibly by Oscar Wilde himself.
The latter’s advent, first
foretold in neon lights (‘Wilde is coming’) and then portrayed, offered intriguing
counterpoint to Jochanaan’s foretelling of another leader (and, if you like, divine
manipulator)—and was once more acted and danced in a mesmerising fashion
perhaps more readily associated with Salome herself by Christian Natter. And is
not the Christ of whom this John the Baptist speaks his and his alone, a product
of the imagination and repressed desires of a religious fanatic, incarcerated
within—visible, throughout—phallic cistern. Was not Christianity always thus:
recall Nietzsche’s ‘there was only one Christian and he died on the Cross’. Other
religions are, true enough to the opera, treated no more favourably. Their claims,
voiced exclusively by men, seem no more plausible and, perhaps more to the
point, no more relevant to the story unfolding and to human flourishing beyond
that particular story, than a horoscope. Strauss’s failure to conjure up music
of more than empty ‘gravity’ for references to Christ tell their own story. Who
manipulates whom, and to what end?
Salome looks elsewhere, to those
who might actually know her: first, yes, to Jochanaan, but ultimately, more
productively, to Wilde—and thus to art, to a game that is aesthetic as much as
it is sado-masochistic. The two can hardly be distinguished, and why would one
try? Weimar-expressionist cabaret beckons from Wildean decadence; Wilde learns
from Strauss and Salome too, ultimately adopting a leather harness in
her/his/their service. Such blurring of pronouns may be read in various ways—and
probably should. In art, perhaps, the mightier the plagiarism, the mightier the
achievement. When Jochanaan and the eunuch Wilde seem partially liberated by adopting the corset and bustle that had once constricted the now queerer, pant-suited Princess Salome, who
manipulates whom? And yet, gender as play, as game, remains a deadly one.
Salome dies; Salome is killed. Patriarchy—an imperialist, orientalist patriarchy
at that—wins to fight another day, to slay another woman, another queer voice
and body too. Does it not always? And yet, her smashing of one—only one, yet
nevertheless one—of the Jochanaan busts,
an aesthetic representations with which Wilde has incited her, remains: as
powerful a moment onstage as that of her murder at the command of a tyrant-abuser.
 |
| Wilde and Jochanaan (Thomas J. Mayer) |
Herod’s upholding of
patriarchal norms, decadent, hypocritical subversion of them notwithstanding,
was expertly conveyed in a wheedling, beyond-Mime performance from Vincent
Wolfsteiner. Marina Prudenskaya’s Herodias, haughty, contemptuous, impressively
controlled in her channelling of sex and gender alike, proved the perfect foil—or,
better, manipulator. Thomas J. Mayer likewise offered, in post-Wagnerian
marriage of word, tone, and gesture, a Jochanaan for this production, no hint—costume
aside—of the ready-to-wear. Peter Sonn proved a worthy successor to Nikolai
Schukoff as Narraboth. At times heart-breakingly beautiful of tone, his longing
was as aesthetically exquisite as it was therefore doomed. All smaller
roles were very well taken indeed, yet also formed part of a greater
whole. If I single out Adam Kutny’s First Nazarene and Annika Schlicht’s Page
as having made the greatest impression, that is doubtless little more than a highly
merited personal reaction.
Conducting the outstanding
Staatskapelle Berlin, then as now, was Thomas Guggeis. Then he made headlines
by standing in at short notice for Christoph von Dohnányi. Now the field was
his own and it sounded as much. From this bubbling, post-Wagnerian cauldron, anything might spill, unless someone could tame it; the battle was vividly, meaningfully rare, rather than effortlessly aestheticised after, say, Karajan. This was not a tone-poem with words; or was it? Unleashing the fabled darkness of this
orchestra’s tone to ends in keeping with and in relationship to the
vision on stage, yet in no sense constricted by them, Guggeis showed, as in his recent Katya Kabanova here,
a keen ear for harmony, line, and orchestral musicodramatic eloquence. Crucially, he commanded the authority to have them speak in the theatre, in the
dramatic here-and-now. This is not Elektra;
it is not so single-minded, so monomaniacal. There are sideways glances;
aesthetic contemplation shading into sexual frustration, if rarely fulfilment;
hints at alternative futures; and so on. Such were rendered dramatically—often
vividly— immanent, without throwing us from Strauss and Wilde’s central trail.
Or so it seemed, for in the absence of any greater metaphysical authority, how
could we know? Aesthetically the answer seemed clear, yet how could it not? Who,
then, had manipulated whom?
