United States Richard Strauss, Salome: Soloists, Band / Jacob Ashworth (conductor). Heartbeat Opera, Irondale Center, Brooklyn, 14.2.2025. (RP)
Heartbeat Opera scored a hit with a riveting, sold-out production of Richard Strauss’s Salome that propelled it into one of the first must-see performances of 2025. Even on Valentine’s Day, when roses and chocolates generally reign supreme, every seat in the Irondale Center was filled for 90 minutes of lust, ambition and murder.
From its 1905 premiere in Dresden, Strauss’s erotically charged operatic adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s French-language play has been a shocker. It was banned in Vienna and London, and a single performance at the Metropolitan Opera was enough to engender a backlash from wealthy patrons, with one reviewer deeming it a story ‘repugnant to Anglo-Saxon minds’.
Heartbeat Opera presented Salome in English, intending to capture the shock value of those initial performances. Neither Wilde nor Strauss were language purists, and both countenanced translations of their eroticized versions of the Biblical tale. Heartbeat Opera used Tom Hammond’s English translation for English National Opera. Comprehension was a factor in the impact of Heartbeat Opera’s Salome, but Elizabeth Dinkova’s concept, Dan Schlosberg’s remarkable orchestration and a tremendous cast were equally vital factors.
The Irondale Center is a small performance space, which Dinkova exploited to amplify the intimacy and immediacy of the horrific story. Jokanaan’s cell was a clear rectangular box that served as a place of imprisonment and refuge. The audience was seated bleacher style on opposite sides of the performance space, and the orchestra and a monitoring station with multiple video screens completed the rectangle.
The video screens were small but served multiple purposes. Wilde’s play is full of imagery, including the moon, blood and glances that were relayed on the screens. Close-ups focused on the protagonists’ emotional states and, on the practical front, conductor Jacob Ashworth’s every facial expression and beat was clear to the cast.
Strauss called for an orchestra of more than a hundred musicians, including celesta, harmonium and organ. Indie opera companies, especially Heartbeat Opera, have limited resources and different artistic aims when staging such behemoths: ingenuity, imagination and a touch of genius must suffice. As he has repeatedly proven in prior Heartbeat Opera productions, Dan Schlosberg has all three.
The role of Salome requires a soprano with the vocal power of a dramatic soprano in the body of a 16-year-old with seductive dancing skills. Summer Hassan ticked all the boxes. Wearing a multicolored, oversized tutu, Hassan projected a Salome with a stunted and warped psyche, whose childish awkwardness was overlaid with overripe sensuality.
Hassan was seductive and magnificently malicious in Dinkova’s imaginative staging of the Dance of the Seven Veils. Her Salome turned the tables on Herod by inducing him to play a game of strip poker in which he was the loser. Only a disapproving glance from Herodias prevented the man from going the full monty. A sexually charged frenzy ensued, with everyone crowded into Jokanaan’s cell. Salome’s tutu was ripped off, but she remained fully clothed and totally in control.
As Jokanaan, Nathaniel Sullivan was a wild-eyed, tortured aesthetic, tempted by Salome’s charms but never yielding to them. Clothed only in a tattered shirt and underpants, with reddened eyes, Sullivan was both prophet and castigator. His lean, sinewy baritone expressed Jokanaan’s vulnerability as effectively as the prophet’s defiance.
Costumed as a clown prince, complete with sash emblazoned with ‘Birthday King’, Patrick Cook’s Herod was pompous, vain and lecherous. Cook’s voice and visage changed in an instant when Herod’s lasciviousness was replaced by revulsion as Salome caressed Jokanaan’s severed head and then kissed his lips. As Herodias, Manna K Jones was glamourous, calculating and vindictive, and one wished only to hear more of her.
David Morgans’s Narraboth and Jeremy Harr’s Soldier displayed fine, forthright voices. As the Page, Melina Jaharis’s gleaming mezzo-soprano could shoot from the lowest notes of her range with laser-like accuracy and brilliance. Contravening Herod’s command to kill Salome, she instead took out everyone with a handgun.
Inspired by the clarinet solo in the opening measures of Strauss’s score, Schlosberg compressed the massive orchestral sound of the original into a complex, intense arrangement for eight clarinetists playing 28 instruments and two percussionists. Conductor Jacob Ashworth and the players realized Schlosberg’s intentions with virtuosic playing.
As implausible as it seems to anyone familiar with the original, it worked. Strauss’s score emerged with all of its grandeur and power intact.
Rick Perdian
Production:
Orchestration – Dan Schlosberg
Director – Elizabeth Dinkova
Sets – Emona Stoykova
Costumes – Mika Eubanks
Lighting – Emma Deane
Video & Sound – John Gasper
Props – Madisen Frazier
Choreographer – Emma Jaster
Fight & Intimacy director – Rick Sordelet
Cast:
Salome – Summer Hassan
Herod – Patrick Cook
Jokanaan – Nathaniel Sullivan
Herodias – Manna K Jones
Narraboth – David Morgans
Page – Melina Jaharis
Soldier – Jeremy Harr