Hot and seedy

Salome is my favourite opera by Richard Strauss, the only one where there is no danger, at any point, of his lapsing into good taste, which there is to some degree in all his other operas, even if only momentarily. With Salome, from the opening quiet clarinet slithering upwards, and the luckless young Syrian Narraboth, later in the work to stab himself to death without anyone noticing, remarking for the first of many times how beautiful the princess Salome is tonight, we know we are in for a mischievous orgy of lust and violence. The work’s chromaticism isn’t used to make particular expressive points but to create and sustain an atmosphere so hot and seedy that we are prepared for anything to happen. And Strauss rewards us always — in as fine a performance as the one we had in Leeds last week — in excess of expectation, however often we might have heard or seen the piece.

As in previous performances by Opera North, we were given a concert performance, the singers going in for a certain amount of gesturing, but without any props. It would add to the fun if they had a marzipan head of Jokanaan for Salome to caress, or at least a nougat tongue for her to suck, but she simply stands austerely and sings her enormous love song with its climactic nonsense about the mystery of love being greater than the mystery of death.

But when the precocious aphorist is as mesmerising as Jennifer Holloway, the absence of gore is hardly felt. This young singer was until recently more inclined to the mezzo repertoire, but her Salome was, if anything, stronger in the upper than the lower register, and she carried off the final scene with such abandoned aplomb that it was tempting to be moved by it as well as enjoyably stunned.