A sun-drenched morning greeted townsfolk and cultural tourists alike for the 43rd no-weather-spoiler day at this year’s Spoleto Festival Opening.
People gathered in the street outside City Hall. Many of the wise women of this fair city sported wide-brimmed hats and beat fans against the heat; seersucker suits and straw hats remained the dress code for men (though I noticed some relenting of this custom.) Those familiar with the program stood in the shade by the wall on the opposite side of the street; others who knew perhaps even better stayed away, “Too hot.”
But I and plenty of others, bred like mad dogs and Englishmen, sat out in plein air, excited to be back in Charleston and part of one of the greatest international festivals in the world. Spoleto was first envisioned by composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who launched festivals in Spoleto, Italy and Charleston in “twinship” 43 years ago.
Following a lively prelude of local jazz from the talented Robert Lewis Quartet and a ringing of the bells from St Michael’s Church, the Venerable Calhoun Walpole from Grace Church Cathedral gave the invocation, citing that Charleston’s past and future are inextricably linked to the arts and particularly its commitment to Spoleto. “For sight and insight …[through the arts] in these perilously difficult and confusing times.” Amen.
Later in the program, Joe Cunningham, Congressman for South Carolina, returned to this theme, saying, “Arts have never been more necessary than now,” referring to our country divided and isolated. “Art challenges, provokes, and elicits emotional reactions… Art can inspire, heal, and console,” and he urged us as audience members to allow the challenges – especially when we are made uncomfortable – to renew and reunite us.
He recalled three presidents who had a great understanding of the importance of the arts. Lincoln during the Civil War commanded the rebuilding of Charleston’s famed dome to symbolize the repair of a country and a ‘binding of wounds.’ Roosevelt under the shadow of another dark period called for the building of a National Gallery. President Kennedy spoke in 1962 during yet another national/international crisis about the importance of the arts, not, he said, as an interruption or distraction but rather one that attests to the strength of a civilization. “So long as the arts go on so will this nation.”
I noticed in the speeches and from Spoleto’s program there is both a commitment to begin to have the hard conversations on many difficult topics and a willingness to diversify. The announcement of the fight against climate change and environmental protection to ban offshore drilling around Charleston drew applause. There was also an acknowledgment by the Mayor, the honorable John Tecklenburg, of the dark shadow of slavery in Charleston’s past. Shows include themes of immigration, global refugees, and abuse of women.
It is still only a beginning for sure, and noticeably absent were many African-American faces, including representatives of the Gullah community, who have shared in the history of Charleston and the offshore islands. While they have free license to offer their distinctive woven baskets on the streets of Charleston, I have not noticed them partaking in the wonderful fruits of Spoleto culture.
Erik Van Heyningen sang a splendid National Anthem. This bass baritone has quite the dramatic success story, as he was noticed in the cast of Spoleto’s Salomé by conductor and stage directing team and plucked from a smaller role to perform prominently as John the Baptist. Through such operatic buzz, major careers are made.
Salomé
Friday night, we attended the opening of Salomé at the grand Gaillard Center, renovated a few years ago and where, in 2016,we caught a spectacular production of Porgy and Bess.
I was excited to see the work of famed directorial team Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser, who first made their debut at Spoleto in 1987 with another production of the same opera. It had been raved about then, and people I met are still talking about it. Caurier-Leiser had used the allegory of the rise of Germany and Fascism in Europe as their conceptual focus.
For this festival, the creative team had reexamined the text of the Strauss Opera, which is, after all based less on the Biblical story than on Oscar Wilde’s play, and exposes abuse of power and social upheaval. They wanted to respond to the recent conversation of harassment and abuse of women. In doing so, they turned a harsh light on the most dysfunctional of families and the psychological cost of being trapped in such.
From the start, the audience was put on notice to expect the unexpected. Strauss’ overture had no sooner started then it was interrupted by a loud techno rendition of Queen’s rock hit “Another One Bites the Dust.” But this is Spoleto after all, and many of the well-heeled heels in the auditorium started tapping, unfazed.
The set and light designed by long-time collaborators Christian Fenouillat and Christophe Forey revealed a world both minimalistic and stunning. The chic yet sterile penthouse balcony was accentuated by a long horizontal row of windows lit by a colored display with the latest ambient residential lighting. When John the Baptist’s “cell” was called for, it was dropped in, a giant box cut-out complete with interior, looking like a cross between a generic motel room and a monastic retreat. Minimalist became cheesy however when the Tetrarch’s table and chairs, amounting to a white plastic folding table and metal stackable chairs, were pulled from upstage as if from a generic convention hall.
Allegra da Vita as the Page and Zach Borichevsky as Narraboth, enter. They are terrific singer-actors and immediately convey the decayed, out-of-control society where decadence and abuse have come to be normalized. The two seem to have escaped to the rooftop from a noisier crowded event below to share a wine bottle and snort some harder stuff. Da Vita, dressed in a pants suit, seems to exude a masculine strength while Borichevsky projects a kind of fluttery, more emotionally fragile figure. Da Vita sets up the entire story with her character’s prescient line, singing of “Something terrible can happen.”
Indeed.
As a reviewer, the intent should be first to understand what the creators are trying to do. In this restaging, the co-directors insisted they wanted to redress the presumed balance of good characters vs. perverted and the condemnation of women in Strauss’ original opera. Most especially, Leiser went so far as to say that the wife of Herod, far from being a nymphomaniac, “is the one who has two feet on the ground,” who tries to protect her daughter against Herod’s predations.
This is by no mean what is projected by the staging. Edna Prochnik as Herodias spends most of her time lurching, uncontrollably drunk, around the stage or collapsed in a semi-comatose heap. Far from protecting Salomé, she allows the abuse to happen before her eyes. Prochnik has a strong dramatic voice but the score has her mostly screeching at her daughter rather than showing any maternal sympathy.
They get closer to what they want with Salomé portrayed by Melanie Henley Heyn, looking in her pale tulle flounced evening gown like an adolescent girl not ready emotionally to negotiate prom night. She mostly moves on stage barefoot, which makes her look even more vulnerable.
But the directors’ claim that she awakens to love visiting Jokanaan in his cell just doesn’t cut it. Rather, she appears a girl, I would say, like many victims of incest, who is over-sexualized and inappropriately acting out. She pulls down her dress to offer her naked flesh to him, and he rather understandably if harshly rejects her – and the whole lot of this whacked-out extended family.
Well, we sympathize with her plight up to a point. But Heyn’s choices physically and vocally make such feelings grow harder to muster. Her vocal delivery, tight notes at the top and attacking Strauss’ repeated lines with almost pathological dullness – the effect, however pathologically justified dramatically, robs us of the lyrical passages we so long for (and need!) in Strauss’ score.
Paul Groves as Herod uses his strong tenor voice to shape the most expressive and sharply defined character in the production. The guy is both powerful and creepy. He sits and watches his step-daughter, all but drooling.
Everyone around Herod becomes a casualty of sorts, certainly the captain of the guards Narraboth, who gets pulled into the web of sexual obsession and takes his own life to escape. But on the way, singer-actor Borichevsky is required to hunch over, squirm and crawl on his belly like a cat in heat. Less might have been more, but performers like characters in this opera, can be too much at times at the mercy of their directorial “masters.”)
Surely, it was all intended: there is no relief in this production. By the time we get to the famous Dance of the Seven Veils, there is no dance, and nothing is veiled. Instead, we are treated to a “full frontal” rape. The detailed gropes and thrusts have been carefully choreographed to coordinate with specific attacks on the strings of the now seemingly endless orchestral passage.
This is where art has gone beyond challenge to an audience assault. A few squirmed, but the audience mostly sat as numb and submissive as Salomé on stage. The creative team has carefully orchestrated all the debauchery and violence, but the disappointing truth is by the end we don’t care for any of them.
The most shocking event in the production comes at the end. No, not when Salomé is kissing the mouth of John the Baptist’s head, although the moment is made more grand guignol by Herod placing himself carefully on a chair, legs splayed, to watch with prurient interest such necrophilia. The head is draped with a blood-soaked cloth, and suddenly Jokanaan and the various guards walk on to the stage. Salomé sees him and, confused, lifts the cloth to discover the decapitated head is that of Narraboth. Jokanaan is in cahoots with the male perpetrators of abuse.
There is not one moment that I believed Strauss’ sublime line “The mystery of love is bigger than the mystery of death.” Strauss’ fascinating interplay of musical modalities has been turned into more of a mangle than a musical conversation. (Somewhere I had all but forgotten the exquisitely rich voice of Van Heyningen as Jokanaan, drowned out by heavy-handed directorial conception.)
Another one bites the dust.
Salome: approximately one hour and forty-five minutes without intermission
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