Kelly Cae Hogan's powerful soprano in the title role is the tastiest treat in Portland Opera's very mixed bag of a "Salome."
Whether singing sensual similes describing the body, hair and mouth of John the Baptist, stressing each low-lying syllable as she insists she's not just obeying her mother in demanding John's head, or soaring high over a loud orchestra, Hogan's Salome is a vocal triumph.
"Salome" by Richard Strauss
What:
Portland Opera’s season opener
When
: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 7, 9; 2 p.m. Nov. 3
Where
: Keller Auditorium, 222 S.W. Clay St.
Tickets
: from $20; students, military $10; 503-241-1802,
Cast
: Salome: Kelly Cae Hogan; John the Baptist: David Pittsinger; Herod: Alan Woodrow; Herodias: Rosalind Plowright; Narraboth: Ric Furman
Composer Richard Strauss knew he was asking the impossible of Salome, in his words "the 16-year-old princess with the voice of Isolde." For a dramatic soprano, Hogan's timbre is unusually bright, so she sounds young. She has the stature of a Valkyrie, but the production team gives her a girlish white dress and a girlish hair style and has her act coltish and lie on her stomach and swing her feet in the air. This mostly looks awkward and doesn't make her Salome visually credible, though she's enough of an actress to flash her decapitation idea at the first sounding of the head of John leitmotif.
Perhaps the best idea of director Stephen Lawless is to stage Salome's dance with six additional, similarly attired dancers; each of the seven women wears a veil over her face. We in the audience guess which is Salome long before Herod, who has to rip the veils off the other six.
Bass-baritone David Pittsinger is a believable Jokanaan or John who strains for some top notes but sings the beautiful Sea of Galilee passage smoothly before baptizing Salome with sand. Tenor Alan Woodrow, a former Seattle Opera Siegfried, really sings Herod, free of the whining that too often passes as characterization in the part. Rosalind Plowright, a former leading soprano now singing the heavier character mezzo roles, brings a formidable voice and the cast's best acting to Herodias.
Tenor Ric Furman sings less sweetly than he did in September's "Big Night" concert, which fits the Narraboth he's directed to play. Normally an idealistic underling hopelessly in love with the princess Salome, Narraboth in this staging is obsessed with the knife with which he'll kill himself until Salome enters; then, hornier than Herod and princess be damned, he can't keep his hands off her. As she does little to discourage him, he seems close to getting what he wants, so why kill himself?
The smaller roles are well cast: Melissa Fajardo as the Page to Herodias; Jonathan Kimple and Konstantin Kvach as the Soldiers; André Flynn as a Cappadocian; Jon Kolbet, Ian José Ramirez, Carl Halvorson, Marcus Shelton and Darren Stokes as the Jews, who during their theological dispute unscroll scripture the width of the stage; Anton Belov and David Warner as the Nazarenes.
On opening night Friday, the singers dealt with an orchestra that was marginally too loud a majority of the time. Conductor George Manahan allows so much intensity early that there's little room for climaxes and little sense of trajectory. Still, the playing is some of the best the orchestra has done.
The new production by Lawless with designers Benoit Dugardyn (sets), Ingeborg Bernerth (costumes) and Mark McCullough (lighting) is set in the present Middle East, in a bombed building whose roof has fallen.
Like Jokanaan, Lawless fixates on the idea of apocalypse. Herod's icy wind and beating wings signal an air raid: lights flash, chandeliers swing, and soldiers point rifles toward the sky. Less proves more when just Salome, Herod and Herodias are onstage and the last two look eerily upward. When Herod orders Salome killed, rubble rains down, felling Herod and Herodias; Salome still stands.
-- Mark Mandel