The opera SALOME opens in Toronto
VIDEO: Stephen Weir interview Atom Egoyan. A short film by George Socka
This is
Opera’s take on the New Testament’s most vile female villain, Salome. It is
Salome, the Princess of Judeau, who demands the head of Jochanaan (John the
Baptist) in return for performing the Dance of the Seven Veils in front of her
stepfather Herod and his court. The year? About 35AD and Salome lives in
Jordan, with her morally bankrupt mother Herodias and her perverse stepfather,
Herod (who in real life not only permitted the beheading of John the Baptist
but gave Pontius Pilot permission to crucify Christ).
“Salome is looking at Jochanaan, who won't return her gaze and you have another character, a female page, who is in love with the head of the Guard and he won't return her gaze either (although he does let her perform Toronto’s first operatic fellatio interruptive on stage – he shoots himself in the head during their sex act)” said Egoyan.
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Headless in Judeau – Atom Egoyan Dials Back the Kink
Headless in Judeau – Atom Egoyan Dials Back the Kink
By
Stephen Weir
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| Curtain Call - Dress Rehearsal For Salome - Canadian Opera Company - Toronto Photo by George Socka |
Article appeared first in Huffington Post:
Atom Egoyan
believes it wasn’t adolescent angst that made a young princess demand the head
of a prophet as payment for dirty
dancing in front of her stepfather.
No, says the Canadian filmmaker (Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter, Chloe) who is back directing the revival
of the opera Salome, it is all about voyeurism, frustrated desire, paranoia and
the decay of the human soul.
The Canadian
Opera Company’s 8-performance run of Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss’s Salome,
at the Four Seasons Centre For The Performing Arts in Toronto, marks the return
of the celebrated Canadian director.
This is the third time that he has directed on the Toronto stage, the
often-shocking opera about 13-year old Salome (danced by Linnea Swan / sung and
performed by soprano Erika Sunnegårdh), her
Dance of the Seven Veils and the beheading of John the Baptist -- the prophet
who foretold the coming of Christ.
“In terms of
the Biblical references, in terms of Oscar Wilde’s rendering of her, she was an
adolescent, I don’t disagree with that,” explains the director. “But I don’t think that is the point. I
am not of the opinion in this production that her behaviour is the action of a
petulant teenager who wants her way; it is something much deeper than that --
we are using this depth as a launching pad.”
Oscar Wilde
wrote the play in 1891 at a time when it was illegal to depict Biblical
characters on the English stage. To avoid this Blue Law, he penned the work in
French, a language he had never before written in.
The work was
completed in one sitting. And the result? Oo la la! Shocking. Outrageous.
Beyond the pale. The controversial play wasn’t produced on the Paris stage
until 1896 at which time Wilde was in prison, ostensibly for the crime of being
gay. Strauss, the German composer,
saw the production and built a German opera around it.
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| Atom Agoyan in the Four Seasons Theatre - Stephen Weir |
Salome’s
desire for the imprisoned Jochanaan – who spends his days screaming out Herodias’
sexual irregularities from a cell underneath the minimalist sloping stage, is
mirrored by a soldier’s tortured infatuation for her, and Herod’s own lust for
his stepdaughter. Consumed by suicide, rape, murder and passion, the
Royal family is inevitably torn apart by these destructive obsessions.
Celebrated
Canadian tenor Richard Margison, dominates the
stage as King Herod. According to the COC, Margison is “hailed for his
ringing top notes and spine-tingling power. Margison is one of the most critically
acclaimed singers on the international stage.”
Hanna
Schwarz, a noted German soprano makes 69 the new 40 in her portrayal of
Herodias. A few months short
of her 70th birthday, Schwarz owns the stage and sings, unmiked, in
a strong voice that seemingly has lost none of its range.
At the
opera’s original premiere, the audience and critics were shocked by its subject
matter and erotic themes; Salome’s world of voyeurism and sexual abuse still
elicits an equally visceral response today, although this time around, Egoyan
has dialed back on the often-explicit interpretation of Salome.
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| Soprano Erika Sunnegårdh - George Socka |
“I can’t
help but look at Oscar Wilde’s play and see that he is dealing with something
that he might not be completely aware of himself, of something being held back,
“ continued Egoyan. “This was written late in his career when there were all
sorts of pressures building against him, which lead ultimately to his tragic
death. I think he was very aware
of this idea of how a voice can be stifled, suppressing all the forces that go
into repression and the effects that it has on the human soul, the human
condition. I think he put a lot into this play that he might not have been
aware of on a conscious level.”
“It is one
of his most challenging pieces of text, it is very difficult to mount as a
traditional play because his language is so over wrought, so purple, but, it
works wonderfully as a libretto.”
"In a
traditional presentation of Salome the set is referred to as a Biblical court
where there are these courtiers, guards and various hangers-on” explained
Egoyan during a break in Salome’s final rehearsal.
The current "set is stripped away and we are in the antechamber of some strange sanatorium. Everything is being videotaped, there is surveillance everywhere and this supports the idea of King Herod’s paranoia.”
The current "set is stripped away and we are in the antechamber of some strange sanatorium. Everything is being videotaped, there is surveillance everywhere and this supports the idea of King Herod’s paranoia.”
“Everything
that happens outside his immediate view is being recorded. So this is a heavy
sort of sub theme in the Opera because we are dealing with voyeurism.”
When it
comes to costumes, Egoyan gets tied up in the Space Time Continuum in settling
who wears what. The Royal family
is in togas, the hired help carry Glocks and are dressed in cheap 1950s style
suits and the Jews and the Nazarenes are in white face, bald wigs and all white
suits reminiscent of the costumes worn by the aliens in the movie Dark City.
The camera
toting characters skulk. The men
in white are wide eyed while the principal characters can’t seem to make eye
contact with each other.
“Salome is looking at Jochanaan, who won't return her gaze and you have another character, a female page, who is in love with the head of the Guard and he won't return her gaze either (although he does let her perform Toronto’s first operatic fellatio interruptive on stage – he shoots himself in the head during their sex act)” said Egoyan.
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| Show Puppets and dancer Linnea Swan perform Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils - Stephen Weir |
In death,
Jochanaan’s head still can’t return Salome’s gaze. She sings to the head as if
it was alive and asks it why it still refuses to look at her!
“This idea
of frustrated desire and voyeurism -- people looking at something they
can’t have is woven into the piece,” explains Atom Egoyan. “I think the music
by Strauss supports the idea of this turbulence and paranoia and these very
extreme emotions.”
The Canadian
filmmaking director has dialed back some of the erotic shock value he employed
in his first go at Salome. Salome’s dance and subsequent gang rape in
front of Herod is done in this production in a multi-media fashion. Salome
dances on stage behind a scrim along with shadow puppetry, for 7-minutes,
heightening the tension on stage and leading to the bloody climax of the is
90-minute long operatic Bible story.
Salome runs for eight performances at the
Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts on April 21, 27, May 1, 4, 7, 10,
16 and 22, 2013.
YOU TUBE - Stephen Weir interviews Atom Egoyan. A short film by George Socka
http://youtu.be/96WsfJ8FziY
http://youtu.be/96WsfJ8FziY
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