OPERA REVIEW : Music Center Revives Hall’s ‘Salome’

The Music Center Opera created something of a stir, and with good reason, when it first ventured Richard Strauss’ magnificently lurid “Salome” in 1986. Opera, we agreed, should always be like this.

Triumphing over the dangers of anti-type casting, Maria Ewing offered a devastatingly original, daringly graphic impersonation of the teen-age Princess of Judea. Sir Peter Hall, then her husband, staged the proceedings with a probing eye for psychological detail and telling stress on the essential aura of perfumed, decaying eroticism.

John Bury designed quasi-biblical decors that sensitively reflected the ripe Jugendstil images of Gustav Klimt. The picturesque set and mercurial lighting scheme, moreover, accommodated every subtle--and not so subtle--shift of mood dictated by the the Oscar Wilde libretto.

Tuesday night, Peter Hemmings & Co. tried honorably to make the hyper-romantic lightning strike again in the same place. The result was a still fascinating, often engrossing performance. But the impact wasn’t quite the same.

It must be significant that Hall did not return to oversee the revival himself. In his place he sent two assistants, William Farlow and Herbert Kellner. An educated outsider would guess that they merely directed traffic while the seasoned principals did their own assorted things.

Some things went better than others. Certain definitions of action had blurred. A few histrionic indulgences distorted the basic dramatic scheme. Even the moon--a crucial participant in this decadent and shadowy tragedy--seemed to be in trouble, for it disappeared and re-appeared with prosaic abruptness.

Such considerations might have seemed trivial--everything in opera is relative--had the cast performed with constant, mesmerizing force. Unfortunately, this “Salome” looked better than it sounded.

Ewing still enacts the title role with deep understanding of the inherent contradictions and with total commitment to the inherent emotional compulsion. She exudes lazy, youthful innocence from the start, and seems stunned--even surprised--by the impact of her initial encounter with the Baptist.

She projects Salome’s fatal confusion, her increasing frustration and awakening womanhood with candid abandon but without cliche. Even her dance of the seven so-called veils is organically--not just orgasmically--motivated.

This soprano gives her all. Having abandoned the golden postage-stamp she wore at the end of the dance two years ago, she also shows her all. This is a bold, honest, utterly exhausting performance.

On this occasion it also was a performance beset with vocal problems. Perhaps this heavyweight challenge demands too much of her essentially lightweight resources after all. Perhaps, after performances in London and Chicago, the strain is beginning to show. Perhaps she merely paced herself badly. Perhaps she was indisposed.

Whatever the reason, she mustered little power for the grand climaxes, chopped long phrases into small pieces, sometimes lost the pitch in ascending lines, and occasionally resorted to Sprechgesang .

She did inflect the words with all manner of insinuating color, however, and she did illuminate key passages with rare sensuous finesse. She left one full of admiration for what she has achieved, and full of worry about what it may cost.

Michael Devlin--ideally gaunt, frighteningly pale, hysterically charismatic--nearly came to grief on the Heldenbaritonal utterances of the loin-clothed Jochanaan. It was announced before the curtain that he was suffering from a cold.

Ragnar Ulfung once again ranted and raved, stalked and sulked with blustery fervor as a virtually definitive Herodes. Marvellee Cariaga played Herodias as a cross between Sophie Tucker and Ma Kettle, sang accurately if rather meekly. Jonathan Mack as Narraboth exuded sympathetic ardor and sang with exceptional purity and sweetness.

The supporting cast included Stephanie Vlahos as a feeble-voiced Page, Michael Gallup as a crusty First Soldier, Louis Lebherz as a solid First Nazarene, and the Heldentenor Elliot Palay leading a secure quintet of hectoring Jews.

The new conductor was Randall Behr, a member of the local staff attempting “Salome” for the first time. The young man is prodigiously talented. He proved that long ago with the Long Beach Opera, where his triumphs included a particularly elegant and eloquent “Ariadne on Naxos.”

He obviously has interesting ideas about “Salome.” He enforced chamber-music clarity in the early scenes, often keeping the massive orchestra down to a shimmer. He brought jolting focus to some inner instrumental voices, yet rose to whomping climaxes whenever fortissimos beckoned.

He has not mastered the delicate transitions, however, in this immensely complex score. He has not yet learned how to sustain tension in one 95-minute crescendo, and and he did not invariably make life easy for the beleaguered lungs at his disposal.

One doesn’t become a grand-scale Strauss conductor overnight.