Review of Dmitry Chernyakov’s Salome at the Hamburg Opera

The premiere of “Salome” was greeted with almost unanimous rejoicing, a standing ovation and a flood of enthusiastic reviews. Two years ago, in the same hall, Elektra, made by the same production team, headed by Dmitry Chernyakov and Kent Nagano, was greeted with approximately the same unanimity. Both stories obviously rhyme, but if in “Electra” the main, all-determining time was the past, then “Salome” is a catastrophe playing out in the present. Tells Olga Fedyanina.

Hamburg’s “Salome” begs for comparison – and in two contexts at once. The director (who, as always, is the set designer) clearly points out the kinship with another Straussian story of filial rebellion, Elektra, staged on the same stage two years ago. Both one-act operas by Chernyakov literally turn into a duology. In both cases, the same production team worked; both performances have the same (with some modifications) scenography, transferring the action of both ancient and Old Testament myths to the art nouveau living room. The parts of the mother and stepfather, that is, in one case, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, in the other, Herodias and Herod Antipas, were performed in both performances by Violetta Urmana and John Daszak.

The second “corridor of comparisons” opens in connection with the title role performed by Hasmik Grigoryan. This is her third triumphant Salome in five years – and the previous two were also in very conceptual “director” productions by Romeo Castellucci and Klaus Guth. Hasmik Grigoryan today knows more or less everything about his heroine – vocally, dramatically, psychologically. Such thorough mastery of the figure will generally not benefit every performance, because the director’s theater does not always know how to handle this measure of the soloist’s self-sufficiency. But Chernyakov knows how, and the fact that this Salome is at the same time a performance for itself is precisely what constitutes an important property of the production.

Chernyakov removes what once gave the work of Wilde-Strauss a reputation “on the verge of decency” – viscous oriental decorativeness, a decadent combination of monumentality and hysteria, a Freudian combination of temptation and bloodthirstiness. Or rather, it doesn’t remove it, but, as they say today, it depreciates it. What remains is this very formal living room, in which guests at Herod Antipas’ birthday party are having an incoherent table conversation. The tetrarch in some incredible pink suit himself resembles a birthday cake with cream roses – but his guests also carry a grotesque “modest charm”.

Along with everyone else, the prophet Iokanaan appears at the festive table – instead of broadcasting invisibly from the tank. The Prophet, played by Kyle Ketelsen, is an accountant-looking man, immersed in reading a red book, however, with a powerful and authoritative voice. But his prophecies are just right for this table and these guests; they look at the prophet with respect and at the same time as an amusing clown.

The fact that he really is a clown does not negate the seriousness of his prophecies.

Only the real destroyer here is not the smugly broadcasting Jokanaan and not even “He who follows” him, but just Salome. She immediately appears on the stage of this festive living room as a disaster, and not as a victim. This Salome cannot be called a spoiled teenager, or even a girl – she is an adult woman in whom hatred for the world around her burns with a bright, sarcastic, evil flame. Her stepfather’s greasy advances don’t seem to bother her at all. There is zero vulnerability in her.

In an interview published in the play program, Dmitry Chernyakov, describing the “psychological alignment” of the characters, says that Salome has probably been a victim of her stepfather’s sexual harassment and a conspiracy of silence in the family since childhood. And he mentions the same Electra. Indeed, both figures in his duology are crippled by the past. The difference is that Aushrina Stundite’s Electra remains alive in the past, longs for its return, it rules her actions, all her fantasies come from it. In Chernyakov’s “Salome,” you can know (or guess) about the heroine’s past, but this knowledge is not at all necessary.

The drama of Hasmik Grigoryan’s presence in the play is fueled by the present, her murderous and suicidal energy is directed at what surrounds her at that moment – be it her stepfather, mother, unsuccessful admirer Narrabot or Iokanaan, a little man with three thin strands of hair, ridiculously emphasizing the baldness that they have. must be masked. Her threefold plea addressed to this little man looks like both madness and provocation at the same time. Behind the prayer there is already a demand looming. Demanding the head of the prophet, Salome in this performance, in fact, demands the end of that world order that is offensive to her, which sits, drinks and rants in the living room, the end of any past. And the fact that she herself will fall dead in the finale, and the clown-prophet will disappear unharmed in the next room, cannot cancel the feeling of victory – her victory. At the end of Dmitry Chernyakov’s play, Salome Hasmik Grigoryan is free – and “He Who Follows” will end the kingdom of Herod.