Twisted operas: Salome, Don Giovanni

I wrote this post a while ago, back in November, when David & I saw two operas in the same week!

Upon my request, having never seen a R. Strauss opera live, David and I went to see Chicago Lyric Opera's Salome with Deborah Voigt leading the cast in a stunning performance. Interestingly, Voigt was previously fired from a production of Salome in London for being "too overweight" for the director's "vision", sparking a huge uproar among opera fans. Voigt underwent gastric bypass surgery and went from a size 28 to a 14, and then was promptly cast as Salome in Chicago.

This was her first major post-surgery performance, and many were eager to see how (or if) she would be affected by her drastic weight loss. She was amazing, and probably would have still been amazing even with the extra weight. (I bet it was easier for her to dance around the stage without the extra 100 pounds, though.)

I just have to tell you, before I go on: of all the opera plots I've ever read or seen, this one was by far the most disgusting and sick.

Rewind to about 30 A.D. in Tiberias, Galilee. Herodias, Salome's mother, remarries her late husband's brother Herod, ruler of Judea. Herod is a complete creep and spends most of the opera lusting lasciviously after his stepdaughter. Nice, huh? Anyway, he's just plain nasty.

Meanwhile, John the Baptist is being held prisoner in Herod's palace prison for denouncing Herodius. Salome decides she wants him even after she hears him going off against her mother for marrying her brother-in-law. She comes on to him, but once he hears she's the daughter of Herodius, he thinks she's gross and rejects her. (Kinda judgmental of him to go spouting off against people like that, dontcha think? Oh well; it is the Bible, after all. Anyway...)

So what's a spoiled daughter of Judea to do? Salome's not used to being denied anything, and it does not go over well with her. She's seriously pissed.

Knowing her power over her lewd and perverse stepfather, she makes a bargain that she'll dance for him if he gives her anything she asks for. Panting and drooling and obviously thinking with his southernmost brain, he promises, and she dances the sexy "Dance of the 7 Veils" for him. (In this production, Voigt got down to a body stocking at the very last split second of the dance before the lights went out - very dramatic!)

After the dance, she insists time after time against his protests that she wants the head of John the Baptist on a platter. It's delivered to her in all its gory splendor, and she proceeds to hold it by its long hair kissing it, singing to it, and doing all kinds of other completely disgusting and unmentionable things to it. Herod sees her doing this and orders his soldiers to kill her, and they do. Nice story, eh? Geeeeeeeez! But a spectacular production, with lots of that edge-of-your-seat kind of morbid fascination.

That same week, David and I went to go see the Florentine Opera's performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni with the Milwaukee Symphony in the pit. (I wasn't playing, only 2 horns.) The plot is basically about Don Giovanni (Italian for Don Juan) running around and seducing women, sometimes breaking into their homes and raping them.

The women in the cast had the voices of angels and sounded positively ethereal.

I was much more moved by this opera than any of the other Mozart operas I've seen, for some reason. Basically, DG is arrogant and almost pathologically self-assured in his advances toward women throughout the opera until he decides to piss off the ghost of a man he killed. He mockingly invites the ghost to come to dinner with him, and the ghost accepts.

Now, most of us would be a bit worried if an other-worldly spirit of someone we'd killed was talking to us, but not Don. He's just confident as ever, right up until the time that he gets dragged down to hell for his transgressions. Amazing.

At the end of this opera, however, the producers did something David and I thought was completely tasteless. After DG has gotten his rightful come-uppance in getting dragged down to hell, they show him in a white jacket and sunglasses with a smoking (i.e., fresh out of hell) suitcase, chasing two scantily-clad bimbos across the stage.

David and I thought this completely ruined the whole point of the opera, which is that Don Giovanni finally gets what's coming to him in hell. I guess it sort of goes with the last aria that attempts to end it on a happy note, but I still thought it was pretty lame.

It was very cool, though, to get to see two world-class productions of really amazing operas in one week!!