By Mal Vincent Virginian-Pilot correspondent January 29, 2015
She was a bad, bad girl.
Even by biblical standards, Salome was a seductress of the first rank. After all, Delilah only gave Samson a haircut. Salome got the entire head of John the Baptist, served on a platter.
The Gospels of Matthew and Mark describe what has come to be known as Salome’s erotic Dance of the Seven Veils, but do not specifically name her or it.
In lore, she has been pictured either as a naive teenager, used by her evil mother to seduce King Herod into executing John the Baptist, or, in other versions, a scheming sexpot who lusted after the holy man.
Her legend has been readily adaptable to all art forms and modern technology – from classic paintings to video games – and now gets an outing by Virginia Opera, opening Friday night at the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk.
The Norfolk-based opera company brings Salome into its 40th season with soprano Kelly Cae Hogan singing the title role of a woman whose racy past might turn heads even in a Navy town.
Composer Richard Strauss, who based the opera on Oscar Wilde’s once-banned play, must have known he was asking for the impossible when he suggested that Salome was “the 16-year-old princess with the voice of Isolde.”
Wilde and Strauss take Salome to the lower depths, suggesting she coveted Jochanaan (the Baptist) to the point of kissing his dead lips as she sings Strauss’ feverish, ecstatic “Ah! Ich habe deinen Mund gekusst, Jochanaan.”
French art critic Joris-Karl Huysmans, getting somewhat carried away, described Salome in the 19th century as someone “who masters the mind of a king by the spectacle of her quivering bosoms, heaving belly and tossing thighs; she was now revealed in a sense as the symbolic incarnation of world-old Vice, the goddess of immortal Hysteria, the Curse of Beauty supreme above all other beauties by the cataleptic spasm that stirs her flesh and steels her muscles – a monstrous Beast of the Apocalypse, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible, poisoning.”
That’s a bit much even for a French writer, but it holds with the woman’s reputation.
Historically, Salome has left a slippery trail to follow.
Both Mark (Chapter 6, verses 17-29) and Matthew (Chapter 14, verses 3-11) seem to identify her as a dangerous female seductress, but neither identifies her by name – only referencing her as the stepdaughter of Herod Antipas with some suggestion of lighthearted foolishness.
She is otherwise unnamed in the Bible, though often used as an example of the temptations of sensuality.
(The Salome who is named in Mark 15:40 as a disciple and a witness to the Crucifixion is decidedly not the same woman.)
The dancing temptress of the Bible was not commonly known as “Salome” until Gustave Flaubert used the name in a short story in 1877.
In a murkier plot from apocryphal texts, Herod is said to have once written a letter to Pontius Pilate revealing that Salome died as a child when she fell in a pool of ice and “her head was cut off and remained on the surface of the ice.”
There seems to be an obsession with decapitations. This horrendous scenario is beyond what even Hollywood has tried.
The historical account provided by Flavius Josephus’ “Antiquities of the Jews” makes no connection between Salome and John the Baptist at all and asserts that she married Phillip, a son of Herod who died childless, and subsequently married another son of Herod and had three sons: Herod, Agrippa and Aristobulus. Somehow old age doesn’t fit her image.
Other accounts, mixed with remnants of history, fiction and fancy, suggest that the teenage Salome was the stepdaughter of King Herod, who had long been away from the empire, supposedly being schooled. Her mother, Herodias, defied the law by divorcing his brother to marry the king.
Denounced as the adulteress of adulteresses by the manic prophet John, Herodias seeks to shut him up – permanently. Knowing the lustful looks of her fat, old husband, she allows her daughter to dance for him only on the condition that any promise be granted. Salome demands the head of John the Baptist, delivered on a silver platter – and gets it, even though the king is reluctant, knowing that John has power with the people, some of whom think that he is the Savior they have been promised.
Little Salome just obeys her mother and even forgets the name of the condemned victim she seeks.
For this Virginia Opera production, Salome is not that naive teenager who was used by her evil mother. This Salome has lusts of her own.
Portraying Salome is a formidable assignment, even for a soaring soprano, but Hogan comes to Norfolk having sung the role throughout Europe and the United States.
In a Portland, Ore., production in November, Hogan was hailed as a vocal triumph, “singing sensual similes describing the body, hair and mouth of John the Baptist.”
On top of good reviews, Hogan has Strauss on her side. The one-act opera contains some of the composer’s best and most theatrical music.
No stranger to bravura evil, Hogan began this season with “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
When she was last seen on the stage at Harrison Opera House, Hogan was being hauled off to an asylum while she steadfastly “trusted in the kindness of strangers” as another famous female, Blanche DuBois, the tragic center of Tennessee Williams’ and Andre Previn’s “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
For “Salome,” baritone Michael Chioldi will sing the role of Jochanaan – his debut with Virginia Opera. The performance will be conducted by Ari Pelto, who worked with Hogan on “Streetcar.” The pair also worked together bringing Salome and her famous dance to life last year in Portland, a show that was co-produced with Virginia Opera.
Director Stephen Lawless, who also directed the production in Oregon, has added a novel touch in that he has seven potential Salomes dancing, with one veil each. A perplexed King Herod is challenged to find the real thing.
Maestro Pelto puts it this way: “Scandalous in every way, the work includes some of the most glorious music and some the craziest, most debauched moments in all opera.”
We can only hope.
Bring on the bad girl.
Mal Vincent has been a longtime culture writer for The Virginian-Pilot. His work will appear occasionally in The Pilot and on HamptonRoads.com. He can be reached at mal.vincent12@gmail.com.
If you go
What: “Salome”
When: 8 p.m. Friday; 2:30 p.m. Sunday; 7 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Harrison Opera House, 160 W. Virginia Beach Blvd., Norfolk.
Cost: $29 to $99
More info: 623-1223, www.vaopera.org.