There’s bound to be some controversy tied to the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s North American premiere of gay Scottish director Sir David McVicar’s 2008 London production of Salome. Yet it’s unlikely that this Salome revival will be greeted with the same levels of outrage that erupted when this 1905 opera by German composer Richard Strauss was relatively new.
For example, a powerful faction on the board of the Metropolitan Opera in New York made sure that Salome was banned from its repertory following a much-condemned single performance in 1907. The Met’s Salome ban then lasted until 1934.
Salome is based upon the 1893 French play of the same name by gay Irish author Oscar Wilde. Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde’s younger lover, is credited with the play’s English translation that was initially banned from public performance by the U.K. government due to its depiction of biblical characters.
Wilde found inspiration for Salome from scant New Testament passages about King Herod’s niece/stepdaughter who demands the head of John the Baptist served up on a silver salver. In Wilde’s retelling, Salome gets her way after she completely disrobes during the infamous “Dance of the Seven Veils.”
“It’s about coercion, it’s about corruption of power and it’s about hierarchies,” said German director Julia Burbach, who was hand-picked by McVicar to re-stage Salome for the Lyric.
“David knows my work as a revival director and as a director,” said Burbach, who is also making her Lyric debut alongside Czech conductor Thomáš Netopil. “It’s a very meticulous, psychological work.”
For McVicar’s Salome, the opera’s usual biblical trappings were junked in favor of an early 1930s setting explicitly inspired by gay Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s violent and anti-fascist 1975 film Salòor The 120 Days of Sodom—a nudity-filled artwork also much banned.
“It’s almost impossible to watch,” said Burbach about Salò. “Just to read the Wikipedia entry is unnerving.”
McVicar’s approach to Salome also brings to mind British class-system costume dramas like Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey—albeit on a much more depraved scale. Production designer Es Devlin’s Salome set mainly consists of a utilitarian below-stairs area of a grand mansion filled with terrified and abused servants.
“There’s lots of different groups that come with very different backgrounds, religions and ideas,” Burbach said. “Some of them are tossed together at a dinner party upstairs, and others are downstairs, and then everybody meets.”
Much of the opera follows Salome and her conflicted feelings for Jochanaan (John the Baptist), who is being kept as a political prisoner in a basement cistern for publicly condemning the morals of Herodias, Herod’s new wife/former sister-in-law. Salome is also unnerved by her stepfather’s lecherous glances.
McVicar’s Salome also deviates from the opera’s usual stage directions by discarding the real-time striptease of the famed “Dance of the Seven Veils.” In its place, some critics have suggested that McVicar and original choreographer Andrew George have depicted a series of pantomimed flashbacks showing Herod’s relentless grooming of Salome throughout her life. Yet Burbach declined to fully endorse that interpretation.
“It’s an emotional palace of her feelings,” said Burbach about this production’s “Dance of the Seven Veils.” “It’s like a collage of various things that are, of course, emotional reality rather than chronological fact.”
Burbach met with McVicar in person in his Scotland home before coming to the Lyric to re-stage his Salome. Burbach revealed that McVicar insisted that Salome remains a virgin by the end of the opera, even though other aspects of her innocence are clearly taken away.
And though McVicar’s 2008 take on Salome predates the global MeToo movement and revelations of sex trafficking tied to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, Burbach suggested that these shocking scandals might color how Chicago audiences react to this Salome in this current political moment.
“Did David mention Epstein? He did,” Burbach said. “It’s not difficult to make parallels in modern life. It’s abuse of power and, of course, this is a house where death is easy.”
Salome returns to the Lyric Opera of Chicago for six performances only from Jan. 25 to Feb. 14 at 20 N. Wacker Drive. Performances are at 2 p.m. Sunday and Wednesday, Jan. 25 and Feb. 11, 7 p.m. Thursday, Tuesday and Friday, Jan. 29, Feb. 3 and 6, and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 14. Sung in German with projected English translations. Recommended for mature audiences only. Tickets are $47 to $375. Call 312-827-5600 or visit LyricOpera.org.