One hundred years after its debut – it was the 26th of December 1906, under the direction of Arturo Toscanini – Salome, the dramatic opera that Richard Strauss adapted from Oscar Wilde’s play, essentially using the theatrical text as the libretto, returned to La Scala last night. And in a sense it was also a “historic” representation because La Scala reconstructed the scenes and the costumes from the show that was created in 1992 by Luc Bondy for the Festival of Salzburg and was then staged throughout the world, but then later destroyed.
However, the reconstruction was an opportunity to make this Salome – which brought Bondy and the young orchestra director Daniel Harding together to collaborate – into something new. And this can already be understood from the suggestion that director Luc Bondy wanted to give to the German soprano Nadja Michael, playing the young Salome who is attracted to Jochanaan because she cannot have him. “Think of Paris Hilton,” the director told the singer. O tempora, o mores. Times change, habits change.
The director Willi Wirk, at the world premiere at the Königliches Opernhaus in Dresden, wanted to push Marie Wittich (in the role of Salome) to excesses of “perversity and impiety," without success. The lady continued to say, “I won’t do this; I am a decent woman,” "as indignant – claims Strauss – as if she were the wife of a Saxon mayor". Given her absolute rigidity, they called in a professional ballerina to replace her, at least for the “dance of the seven veils”.
Since that time, a number of different Salomes have taken to the stage, in all forms, possessed and sluggish, Rubenesque and anorexic, aphasic and tireless, but never before has there been one quite like Nadja Michael who so happily fills the role, both for her physical resemblance and her dramatic performance. Nadja Michael is a former athletic champion, and it shows: her score is chilling: an hour and forty minutes of relentless dancing and singing. “I had lessons with Michele Villanova, from La Scala’s Dance Company. It was certainly not an easy test. But it was wonderful.” Moreover, she is an actress with a strong stage presence and seductive, feline-like movements making her very erotic and sensual during the dance of the seven veils. “During the dance, the veils do not come off completely. It is not necessary to undress completely in order to express sensuality. On the contrary. And Strauss’s music is so imbued with eroticism...”.
“Salome is an almost beautiful woman,” explained Harding, “who wants this and then that and then this without ever thinking of the consequences. I don’t believe she is treacherous.” Herodias is mainly an ambiguous figure. “Jochanaan calls her “Sodom’s daughter,” highlighted Bondy, “but she considers herself to represent absolute purity and when she meets a man that represents the sanctity of her wildest being, she is naturally attracted by his spiritual side. And she wants to demonstrate that she can conquer what he represents, chastity.” And here is the eroticism (more than love): one of the play’s fundamental elements, which is not only found in the famous scene with the dance of the seven veils in which Salome extorts the promise to kill Jochanaan from her stepfather, Erode. She is certainly impassioned, but her passion is mostly due to the fact that “she cannot have him,” like a sort of wilful child who “wants to be a part of the ultimate sacrifice,” observed the director, “also by punishing her father and her mother.”
For the time being, not even Paris Hilton has gone this far. But that’s not to say that one day, after overdosing on compulsive shopping, she will also focus on what cannot be bought: love, perhaps with the head of her beloved served on a silver platter. “Actually, Paris Hilton recently came to mind during the rehearsals for Salome,” admits Nadja Michael. “Having grown up in a decadent and violent setting, which ignited her desire and prepared her for anything, Salome was used to considering everything as permissible, for her, anything was possible. Including cutting off the head of the man who refused to bow to her whims like everyone else. She was a girl who was too lonely, too rich and too spoiled. Just like the American heiress and so many of today’s teenagers.” Ten minutes of applause.


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