The Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra has given the city its first, overdue taste of Richard Strauss's Salome, an opera of such significance that American writer Alex Ross opens The Rest is Noise, his recent history of 20th-century music, with an account of a 1906 staging of the work.
One
felt the same sense of the momentous in the Town Hall on Friday, enjoying a completely homegrown cast and our cherished APO, under the expert baton of Eckehard Stier.
Margaret Medlyn's Salome was a diva assoluta turn. With no need of a score, Medlyn achieved dramatic marvels within her few square metres of stage. Here was a princess who could turn from sex kitten to fury within a few beats; a soprano who had no need to clutch a disembodied head to take Strauss's music to almost terrifying levels of ecstasy.
Martin Snell, coming down from the top of the stage for his initial sparring with Medlyn, made Jokanaan a man rather than a mere zealot. The bass has an enviable turn of phrase, although the confrontation with Medlyn lost a little with Snell's music stand between the two singers.
For Heldentenor lyricism, Patrick Power's Narraboth would have few equals on the international circuit. Opening the opera, floating his line through Strauss's saturated harmonies, he was the ideal foil to the evil Salome.
Richard Greager was a suitably loathsome Herod while mezzo Helen Medlyn rendered Herodias as vile and vicious as they come.
Smaller roles left nothing to be desired, although often singers had unfair competition from Strauss's orchestral tsunami.
Some audience members may have been occasionally mystified due to the lack of staging. Nothing, however, could ultimately detract from the power of this music to sweep one away, with the orchestra at its most inspired and Stier catching every nuance of the score.
What: Salome.
Where: Auckland Town Hall.
Reviewer: William Dart.
