The soprano Vida Miknevičiūtė prevails in Les Arts as a reference Salome | Culture | EUROtoday

In their Memories of the primary premieres of my operasdictated already in previous age, Richard Strauss humorously evokes Marie Wittich’s protests throughout rehearsals for the Dresden premiere of Salomein December 1905. The Wagnerian soprano – and spouse of a distinguished Saxon official – reproached him for having written her an inconceivable function: enjoying a 16-year-old princess with the vocal density of an Isolde. “That is not done, Mr. Strauss”: a biblical teenager can not subdue an orchestra of 100 academics, nor can an oriental virgin sing like a Wagnerian heroine.

Strauss admitted that Wittich was completely proper and that his complexion prevented him from embodying that inconceivable. And but, a number of sopranos have touched it on stage: from Ljuba Welitsch to Asmik Grigorian, together with Anja Silja and Catherine Malfitano. A Viennese critic invoked exactly these final two when writing about Vida Miknevičiūtė in 2023. The Lithuanian soprano, in full vocal maturity at 46 years previous, debuted as Salome shortly earlier than the pandemic, in Melbourne, and since then she has triumphed with the function in Vienna, Helsinki, Munich, Milan and Berlin, in productions signed by Christof Loy, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Claus Guth and Damiano Michieletto.

His Valencian Salome, premiered on April 25 within the wonderful season on the Palau de Les Arts, confirms this path. He dominates the character from his first look on stage, when he leaves Herod’s banquet to take to the night time air to the sound of a decadent Viennese waltz. He avoids the predominant hysterical archetype and replaces it with an woke up, ironic and perverse look, sustained by financial actions and in no way imposed. Added to this can be a brilliant and compact timbre, with frank emission and exquisitely nuanced excessive notes, enhanced by a really expressive slight vibrato.

But it was her vocal stamina within the demanding last scene that captivated the viewers. The Lithuanian held with astonishing firmness and musical authority that spectacular symphonic poem with voice, the place Strauss recapitulates a lot of the opera’s motifs. And she turned the ending, when she repeats, stuffed with pleasure: “I have kissed your mouth, Jochanaan,” whereas crossing the good orchestral wall in C-sharp main with sharp sharp edges like knives, into one thing troublesome to overlook.

The remainder of the forged was not far behind. Nicholas Brownlee shared ovations with Miknevičiūtė as wonderful Jochanaan. This 37-year-old American bass-baritone had already triumphed final season at Les Arts with The Flying Dutchmanby Wagner. He effortlessly imposed his singing offstage, with a corporeal heart and metallic shine, and composed a prophet that was extra energetic than hieratic, with a really engaging bass, though much less cavernous than traditional.

Tenor John Daszak is a reference Herod, through which he combines a strong appearing portrait—with out histrionics and notable psychological complexity—of the decadent and libidinous tetrarch of Judea with an uncommon vocal high quality. The mezzo-soprano Michaela Schuster embodies an ideally imply and haughty Herodias, and intelligently manages the restrictions on the ends of her instrument. And her colleague, considerably extra veteran, Lioba Braun was a luxurious as Herodias’s Page, though on this manufacturing she turns into a nurse always current on stage.

Special point out deserves the younger Wagnerian tenor Christopher Sokolowski, who made his debut as Narraboth, and opened the opera with excellent lyrical brilliance, though the manufacturing mistakenly turns him right into a pushover. Among the quite a few supporting roles, along with the Asturian tenor Jorge Rodríguez-Norton because the First Jew and several other names from the Center de Perfectionament, the younger Czech baritone Jiří Rajniš stood out because the First Nazarene.

The different architect of the success of this Salomealong with Miknevičiūtė, was James Gaffigan. The American director, former musical director of Les Arts, returned to the pit of the Valencian theater in full operatic development: present musical director of the Komische Oper in Berlin and appointed to the Houston Opera. Gaffigan went by means of Strauss’ rating with structural readability, aircraft transparency and rhythmic precision, attentive to its most expressionist particulars, though with out neglecting the timbral opulence in entrance of an orchestra and a pit that he is aware of effectively. His course particularly shone in a pointy and sensual Dance of the seven veilswhich contrasted with the stylized sexual violence seen on stage.

The distinction was not unintentional: the weakest level of the manufacturing is the stage course of the Italian Damiano Michieletto, the place his insistence on inserting a present matter as soon as once more turns into a legal responsibility. After denouncing sexual tourism in Madama Butterfly (Teatro Real, 2024) and sexist violence in Carmen (2025), now strikes to Salome the results of kid abuse.

The manufacturing, premiered at La Scala in 2021 with out an viewers and revived there in 2023, proposes a psychoanalytic and ritualistic studying that rewrites the drama of Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss as a household tragedy of Shakespearean inspiration, near Hamlet. The focus shifts to the fratricide of Herod Philip by the hands of his usurping brother, with Herodias as Gertrude and a Jochanaan remodeled right into a paternal ghost: an underground voice that emerges from a cistern transformed into the daddy’s tomb with a mound/altar together with his title to unearth the repressed fact of the clan.

Paolo Fantin’s set design configures a white field with black partitions presided over by a moon transformed into an enormous pendulum, articulating a chromatic development from black to white to blood pink. Carla Teti’s costumes introduce strategies of the Viennese Secession within the feminine characters, whereas Alessandro Carletti’s lighting reinforces the ritual substratum. Five black-winged angels officiate on the sacrifice of the Agnus Dei they usually mission Salome as a martyr near Saint Agnes, making the most of the Agnes/Agnus analogy.

The most private—and problematic—gesture is the inclusion of a kid double of Salome, which makes the trauma express and turns the Dance of the seven veils in a flashback of the abuse he suffered. In the ultimate scene, the protagonist takes off her wig and divulges a shaved head as an indication of her martyrdom. The premiere viewers responded with enthusiasm, however the value of this symbolic overload could be very excessive.

In the arms of Michieletto, Salome It turns into a traumatic studying that nullifies its blasphemous eroticism and its turn-of-the-century scandal. The redefinition of the remainder of the characters erases their dramatic profiles—Narraboth lowered to a faint-hearted accountant, the Page become a moist nurse—and empties the supporting characters: the 5 Jews lose their theological dispute in favor of an irrelevant pantomime, whereas troopers and Nazarenes stay as troupes in smoking. Added to that is the absence of true course of actors: the scene, transformed right into a succession of dwelling workfinally ends up devouring the drama. A Salome visually good, however theatrically muted.

There is one element of this manufacturing that Richard Strauss himself would undoubtedly have applauded: the conversion of Jochanaan’s head right into a stone altar. A strategy to conjure exactly that vogue that the composer got here to remorse in writing in his Memories: “What those exotic variety show stars indulged in in later performances, with their serpentine movements and brandishing Jochanaan’s head in the air, often exceeded all measures of decorum and good taste!”