Robert Carsen's Kewlest Salome Locks it Down in Torino

(above: Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils @ Torino's Teatro Regio. Photo: Ramella and Giannese/Piva) 

ok, there are 2 versions of Salome: the kewl one (Carsen) adn the boring one (every1 elses) and we must unite teh two salomes so there can be a final showdown of level bosses with Carsen 4 the win! OC was treated to the kewl one on Sunday afternoon in Torino, where director Robert Carsen wowed the audience like clearing 4x4x4x4x4x Tetris rows with Korobeiniki blasting on the stereo.

The curtain rose on Herod’s palace, which was meticulously visualized as a sterile and commanding Las Vegas casino vault, excellently realized via floor to ceiling safety deposit boxes, and a gigantic, thick circular vault door on the right wall. Imposing walls covered in a grid of safes, and polished marble slabs covered the floor like a Manhattan mecha office lobby. On the left was a floor-to-ceiling escalator bank (but sadly, non-mechanized stairs). In front of the escalator was a security station, which consisted of a brushed metal banquette with nine plasma screens broadcasting eye-in-the-sky transmissions from around Herod’s casino. As Narraboth (sang by an excellent, light, and emotive Jörg Dürmüller) waxed poetic on the beauty and paleness of the princess, he simultaneously stared at her visage reclining on a lounge, unbeknownst to the security camera that was transmitting her every action to the plasma screen display.

Soldiers were updated as security personnel. Extras disguised as lounge waitresses were in 70s disco Egyptian garb, gold wedge sandals and short sparkling Cleopatra skirts wrapped around their hips, while the men went topless in Roman battle costume and the occasional helmet.

   

(above: Robert Carsen's Salome @ Torino's Teatro Regio. Photo: Ramella and Giannese/Piva) 

Enter Salome, sung by German soprano Nicola Beller Carbone, who again, was physically and vocally on point, but was lacking an overall charisma. Dressed in black Reeboks, black spandex capris, and a long black tank, she appeared to have just cruised in from a low-intensity workout at the gym. She was the perfect bored teen -- stormy, emo, and petulant, lounging carelessly on the security banquette.

It was when Mark S. Doss's plastic Jochanaan was summoned from the depths of the bank vault (via the vault door) that conductor of the evening, Roberto Fores Veses, really p00ped his frac, and his weakness was almost offensive. There was no attention paid to the leitmotifs or corresponding orchestral cues. There was no suspense, terror, or fire. Only big noise via the exaggerated gestures of a young conductor who flung his arms for a wall of sound. No shape, no dynamic, and forte to piano was managed by pure circumstance rather than technique. Overall the timbre of the orchestra was overbearing and effectively drowned-out all nuance of singing. The only goose bumps of the night were powered by Carsen's spot-on direction and vision.

After Jochanaan retreated back into his hidey-hole, Carsen's Jews appear in the guise of Herod & Herodias’ guests, dressed in cocktail party mode...rich silk dresses on the trophy wives and tuxedos on the retired lawyers and bankers. It was so refreshing not to have the stereotypical rabbinical Jews rushing around in circles mashing their spiny fingers together, tallit and payis flying about.

We met Herod, sleazy nouveaux riches and casino owner, who orders refreshments served by topless waitresses. Herodias was a washed-up Las Vegas showgirl, sporting an auburn wig, a gold sheath dress, and gold stiletto heels, while Herod was a slumlord dressed in a gaudy grey salesman suit and pink shirt.

(above: Robert Carsen's Salome @ Torino's Teatro Regio. Photo: Ramella and Giannese/Piva)

Tanz für mich was the apex of brilliance. We will always have a love/hate relationship with Robert Carsen. He is bursting full with such original ideas and revolutionary concepts, but sometimes goes astray in a heavy-handed, rebellious approach, slamming down genius with such forceful hammyfists that it becomes derivative, eye rolling drama...like a sullen teen who thrives on negative attention. We saw it in his Scala Candide last year as a prime example, and he went astray again in his Vienna Manon Lescaut (we did however love his Scala Kát'a Kabanová, but we saw that before we started blogging sucks 4 u!).

When obstinate, moody Salome finally agreed to dance her famous "Dance of the Seven Veils", she strutted out on stage dressed as a xerox copy of her washed-up, attention-whore  mother (sung by a screeching, trashy, but excellent Dagmar Pecková) in the same red wig, golden cocktail dress, and too-high heels, looking just as ill fit and age-inappropriate as her mother.

Manfred Voss's innovative lighting killed the stage floods and bathed the entire scene in gorgeous glittering gold, warm and sensuous, a pulsating, dynamic backdrop for the sickest Dot7Vs that OC ever saw. Salome strutted over and confronted her shocked mother doppleganger, jauntily mocking her and threatening her with overt sexuality.

(above: curtain call, the party guests)

Salome began dancing a cabaret-style seduction, plucking the retirees from the audience of her parent's party guests and grinding against them, pulling away the cashmere scarves of old men and leaving them stunned and breathless on the floor. Herod and Herodias were seated apart, stage front, and while her mother looked away uncomfortably, Herod was gleefully tantalized. Salome began a chair dance, and the retirees got up and danced around her, their clothes beginning to molt off their gyrating bodies. They took their handkerchiefs from their pockets and placed them over their faces, twirling around the oversexed Salome in anonymous frenzy. The whole dance built to a literally climatic finish, and Herod followed his stepdaughter's every erotic thrust with a large video camera, simultaneously broadcasting the action on the nine plasma screens at the security desk. wtf? Taking incest to a whole new level, this generation to be broadcast on YouTube or released for profit.

(above: curtain call, Jochanaan)

The dance is so unforgiving, so sexual -- she mimes fellatio on one of the men (old enough to be her grandfather), mimes sodomy from another, and even fellates her gold stiletto when her secksual appetite cannot be sated by the men. Salome dropped her dress to her ankles and finished the seduction in a cream silk slip. The men were literally rolling around on the floor at her feet in pure secksal ecstacy, air humping and pulling off their layers as quickly as their feverish hands could manage.

The end scene, and the men have shed all their clothes, all writhing around stark naked on the stage, white old man butts polarized as the gold lighting faded away and became an intense, harsh wash of white light. The plasma screens recorded all the action, close-ups of Salome's thrill of seduction, interplayed with x-rated shots of a women’s naked bits. At the end, she attacked her mother, grinding her lips against hers in a victorious struggle for matriarchal power. The Dance of the Seven Veils never gets me hawt, like not even close *yawn yawn* but this one was insanely suffused with raw eroticism and over stimulated incestuous taboo between father and daughter. It was off the higgety. ok pls dont start the rapture before i lose my virginity yae gawds.

(above: curtain call, Nicola Beller Carbone)

As the audience settled down and everyone tried to imagine garbage men on the toilet, nuns baking cookies, and homeless men playing chess, the scene segued into Ich verlange von dir den Kopf des Jochanaan, Salome turned haughty and absolutely unyielding, a girl suddenly aware of the powerful wield of blooming sexuality, and the manipulation over her father. Herod, still holding the video recorder, zoomed in on her face when she asked for Jochanaan's head. When he offered to bribe her with jewels, he plucked safety deposit keys from a ring, which his shallow party guests snatched and rushed off to capitalize on. Gold sand and glitter spontaneously poured from half a dozen of the uppermost boxes, raining down the background for a glorious effect.

(above: Robert Carsen's Salome @ Torino's Teatro Regio. Photo: Ramella and Giannese/Piva) 

As the head of Jochanaan is brought to Salome via the revelers who entered the vault door, it was brought to her bloodless and rubbery. Before the final kiss, the revelers, unable to feign pity or reflect on the severity of the beheaded saint, play a round of kickball with the rubber head. As Salome slinked off into the vault wall that broke apart to reveal a desert landscape, with the head of the prophet raised over her shoulders in outstretched arms, Herod instead called for his wife Herodias to be killed, to which the bloodthirsty revelers gleefully and instantly agreed.

Lights slammed shut, and this was the best direction of Salome OC could ever imagine. For the first time, OC can visualize why the 20th century opera was banned and criticized at its inception. The juxtaposition of the Dot7Vs and Herod's final blame raised the discourse to a conceptual level that worked in so many ways. I'm gonna go start a facebook group for this...brb.

(above: Teatro Regio Torino)

(above: exterior of Teatro Regio Torino)

(above: exterior front of Teatro Regio Torino)

(above: Downtown Torino)

(above: interior of Teatro Regio Torino)

Comments

[flipstinger]

thnx alwayz for d 411...
feel the same way 'bout this love/hate relationsip with Carsen's ideas. like i said before, am not a fan of modernize operas but i trust u on this one - if you said it worked this time then i take it as a legit observation since you were there and i wasn't....

[Bill Philin-Ploplis]

Wow! I usually associate Carsen with minimalist productions. This whole thang is not for me, but I can see how it would work.

[inter mezzo]

are underpants the new rock'n'roll? i like the hawt lesbo action idea - the Salome/Herodias dynamic is usually glossed over. thanks for the wonderful report!!

[Jason]

Photoshop an image of "Ms. Galore" from Goldfinger in front of that vault door, and we'll be in business. I'm sure she'd muster a sardonically appreciative smile at the Salome/Herodias bit, too.

[elio]

dear OC,
I was at the "prima" in Torino and, having seen the show, I must say that your review perfectly conveys the spirit (and the flesh) of Carson's Salome. I was stunned, too, by his direction and by the "back to the roots" feeling that was behind such a modern setting. Your description of the many strenghts and the few weakness of the cast is also on the spot, and I really loved Jörg Dürmüller, too.
So, it's really a pity that you (and your faithful readers) missed Noseda at the helm, beacause, with his direction, the show reached another level and was one of the best in years (especially in an "important" but frankly "second-tier, opera house" like Teatro Regio).
Noseda opted for a balance between raw energy and slow elegy that was perfect to convey the complexity of Strauss score, a music that was able to speak of sensuality and love and even tenderness with an always grooming sense of decay and loss, in a context that expressed and magnified dynamics and tension.
A quite new perspective that erased years of easy vulgarity and harsh "walls of sound" shedding light on a deeper understanding of the opera.
The Regio Orchestra played nearly flawlessly, showing the attention to details and dynamics which can be reached only with many many days of work and a great feeling with the director.
elio (our man in turin)