As Opera Chic was getting ready for her night at la Scala -- OMG
the Daniel Harding-conducted Salome premiere OMG!!! -- she opened her copy of la Repubblica and she went all like, dude wtf?????
Because (Former East) German soprano Nadja Michael tells the newspaper that director Luc Bondy -- responsible for many stark, elegant, minimalist opera stagings that Opera Chic really really liked -- instructed her so:
"Salome is not truly evil. She's a 16 year old girl: egotistical, too rich, too spoiled, always getting what she wants. Think of Paris Hilton: a woman who's almost beautiful (ed: zing!) who says I want this, I want that, without thinking of the consequences".
The Bondy goes on to pontificate -- frankly, quite weirdly -- about his ideas for the staging
"centered around the clash between the sacred and the earthly in a changing world, the religious disputes between Judeans and Nazarenes, whom I imagined as hippies form the 1960s, as pacifist flower children: it reminds me of the current clash between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq (ed: ?)".
The staging had its début in Salzburg, 1992, but since then the sets got damaged, so the ones we'll see at la Scala tonight are spanking (heh) new. Anyway, Opera Chic will be there, to report later.
