FIRST NIGHT

Opera review: Salome at Covent Garden, WC2

This revival still has some mesmerising sequences, but its emotional temperature is tepid when it should be scalding
Deranged and compelling: Malin Byström as Salome
Deranged and compelling: Malin Byström as Salome
CLIVE BARDA/ROH

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★★★☆☆
Go to the Royal Opera’s Salome and you experience not a single show, but a global franchise. Its director, David McVicar, also has his Rigoletto running at Covent Garden. In New York the Met is doing three of his productions in as many months. And McVicar stagings will be seen in 15 other opera houses around the world this season, from Vienna to Beijing. The Scot is a one-man export drive.

Of course, many of those stagings aren’t new. This Salome dates from 2008 and is on its third revival. That, however, is the point. McVicar is the most successful opera director of our age because his lavish productions are not only watchable, but durable.

His style could be described as Franco Zeffirelli with