Klarinet Archive - Posting 000001.txt from 2008/02

From: "Forest Aten" <forestaten@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Salome at the Dallas Opera
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:56:57 -0500

For those of you in the Dallas, Tx area....

If you attend let me know, orchestra members often meet after the show for a
brew.

Forest

This is the short version...:-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RaDT5vbKXc

Or...

A preview by Dallas Morning News critic, Scott Cantrell:

Creepy Bible story unfolds in Dallas Opera's 'Salome'

OPERA: Creepy story with astonishing music opening at Music Hall

12:00 AM CST on Thursday, January 31, 2008

By SCOTT CANTRELL / The Dallas Morning News
scantrell@-----.com

It's got murder and suicide, dirty dancing, necrophilia and incestuous
droolings, all packed into a mere 110 minutes. The cast of characters
includes a slimy monarch in a dusty corner of the Middle East, his obsessive
Lolita of a stepdaughter and a strange, bearded, doom-spouting evangelist.

NAN COULTER/Special Contributor
Mlada Khudoley rehearses the title role in Salome. It sounds like a
big-screen thriller. But it's actually an opera, based on the Bible - by way
of a play by Oscar Wilde. And the creepy story is wrapped in some of the
most astonishing music ever to slither and blast out into an opera house.

With Salome, first performed in Dresden, Germany, 102 years and two months
ago, Richard Strauss sounded his barbaric yawp (and slimy insinuations) over
the operatic rooftops of the world. (Two previous operas, Guntram and
Feuersnot, never took hold in the repertory.)

Starting Friday at Fair Park Music Hall, with three subsequent performances,
Salome returns to the Dallas Opera for the first time in three decades. The
production is the work of British director-designer John Lloyd Davies, who
created the Dallas Opera's 2006 Ariadne auf Naxos. It will be sung in the
original German, with English supertitles.

"You know the biblical story," says Dallas Opera music director Graeme
Jenkins, who's conducting all four performances. "But you don't know the
story of what caused the head of John the Baptist to be cut off: But it's
this 16-year-old girl's wild obsession with John the Baptist, and the way
she manipulates her stepfather."

A little background is in order. The Herod who executed John the Baptist was
Herod Antipas, son of Herod "the Great," who was infamous for dispatching
the newborns of Judea in an attempt to kill the King of the Jews sought by
the Wise Men.

The younger Herod was a less unsavory figure than his father, who ultimately
descended into madness. Herod Antipas' problem seems to have been weakness,
as when he yielded to Salome's obsession with John the Baptist and when
(along with the Roman governor Pilate) he wouldn't intervene to spare Jesus
from mob rule.

In Strauss' opera, we meet Herod and Salome, plus Herod's second wife
Herodias. (Salome is Herodias' daughter by a previous marriage.) By now,
John the Baptist, here called Jokanaan, is already imprisoned in a cistern.

Narraboth, captain of the court guard, is in love with Salome. "How
beautiful is the Princess Salome tonight," he sings, in the first words of
the opera. But she only has eyes for the strange prophet, whose proclamation
of a new world order and damnation for sinners seems only to inflame her
passion. To Jokanaan's disgust, she begs and begs to kiss his mouth.

Meanwhile, Herod's feelings toward Salome are, in Dorothy Parker's memorable
phrase, more than kin and less than kind. He promises her anything her heart
desires if she will dance for him. The deal struck, Salome announces her
price: Jokanaan's head on a platter.

Even Herod is horrified, and he offers Salome peacocks and jewels instead.
But, egged on by her mother, Salome will have nothing but the prophet's
head.

Herod finally gives in, and Salome dances her famous Dance of the Seven
Veils, which is sometimes excerpted as an orchestral piece. Strauss, proper
Munich burgher that he was, intended only a mildly titillating
hootchy-kootchy, but modern Salomes sometimes do a striptease down to their
birthday suits.

The dance done, and Herod's lust now well-fanned, Jokanaan's head is duly
delivered. No good can come of this, but you'll have to go to the opera to
see exactly what happens next.

Quite compact by operatic standards, and in only one act, Salome still poses
some formidable challenges. For the title role, Strauss wanted "a
16-year-old princess with the voice of an Isolde." Yeah, right. Even if
older, she should at least look plausibly sexy. And the original
orchestration is enormous, with four and five of each wind instrument,
although the composer subsequently produced two scaled-down versions.

"I'm so grateful to the [Dallas Opera] board," Mr. Jenkins says, "for
allowing me to use the full orchestra. I think it's 87 people. For the
orchestra, it's the biggest musical challenge since Wozzeck."

Singing the title role here is Russian soprano Mlada Khudoley, "an untamed
lioness," Mr. Jenkins says. British bass-baritone Robert Hayward is
portraying Jokanaan, with Allan Glassman as Herod, Judith Forst as Herodias
and Jonathan Boyd as Narraboth.

And now, the question that may be piquing your curiosity: Will there be
nudity?

All Mr. Jenkins will say is "Come and see."

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