|
COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
The first time the Metropolitan Opera staged Richard Strauss's "Salome," ninety-seven years ago, J. P. Morgan's daughter blanched at the sight of a soprano making out with a severed head, and the production was shut down after one night. The ballerina who had performed the Dance of the Seven Veils on the Met stage decided to take her act to a vaudeville house, where she had a considerably warmer reception. America was soon in the grip of a Salome craze. In January, 1909, Strauss's opera reappeared in triumph at Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera House, with the bewitching Mary Garden in the title role. Not long afterward, a singing waiter at Jimmy Kelly's, in Union Square, wrote a song entitled "Sadie Salome (Go Home)," which told of a nice Jewish girl who dismays her sweetheart, Mose, by playing Salome onstage. "Don't do that dance, I tell you, Sadie," Mose pleads. "That's not a business for a lady!" It wasn't much of a song, but it sold well enough to win its composer a job on Tin Pan Alley. A few years later, he wrote "Alexander's Ragtime Band."
Karita Mattila's performance in the Met's new production of "Salome" is unlikely to inspire a commemorative number from the next Irving Berlin, but by rights it should. The only word fit for the occasion is a British one: Mattila left her audience gobsmacked. She sang one of the most taxing roles in the repertory as if it had been written for her, and she delivered a physical performance that might have had any stray Hollywood executives...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
