By Tony Guzman

Nina Warren

The second entry in Florida Grand Opera’s 2002-2003 season is a stunning and satisfying production of Richard Strauss’ searing reworking of Oscar Wilde’s play Salome, which scandalized the opera world in the early 20^th century and still packs quite a wallop as a fascinatingly perverse and over-the-top treatment of the struggle between the religious sensibility and sexual desire. King Herod of Judea has the hots for babe-a-licious stepdaughter Salome who gets the hots for a defiantly ascetic John the Baptist imprisoned underground in the palace cistern. One “Dance of the Seven Veils” and beheading later, our very kinky girl finally gets her kiss.

Crucial to this Salome’s visceral impact and dramatic power is the brilliant production design of Allen Charles Klein, who contributed not only this production’s superb set, but its vivid costume and lighting design as well. The dynamically angled set beautifully renders pockmarked, partially crumbling stone columns, conveying claustrophobic gloom and moral exhaustion. Much of the stage is taken up with a flight of steps, adding a vertical component to the action that stage director Bliss Hebert uses to striking effect in blocking out the action. In a masterstroke, Klein insets John the Baptist’s cistern high up on the steps, making a focal point of it – a Chicago Lyric Opera Salome I saw years ago had the Baptist rising from a trapdoor in the stage’s floor: boring! One could go on and on about Klein’s set, lighting and costumes. Suffice it to say we’re talking stagecraft at its scintillating and impactful best. 

Nina Warren recently appeared as Salome with the Seattle and Berlin Operas and one readily sees why it’s becoming a signature role for her. Vocally, she’s ideally suited to the part: a dramatic soprano capable of lyrical shadings. But it’s her acting that makes the part her own. She obviously gets a huge kick out of playing a very bad girl, pouring herself into the willful, self-centered and seriously unstable Salome with gusto and commitment. She’s particularly gripping towards the end, quite rightly playing her character as going insane, taking thrilling risks and seeming to literally go berserk. In another masterstroke, director Hebert largely overcomes Warren’s limitations as a plausible exotic dancer by having four loincloth-clad male dancers join her, taking up the slack salacious writhing-wise during the “Dance of the Seven Veils.”

As John the Baptist, baritone Ned Barth is a tad too bland, vocally and otherwise, to effectively counterweight Warren’s Salome. Tenor Allan Glassman, as Herod, sings with more smooth power and authority. His creepily funny, stylized opera buffo portrayal of Herod is polished and entertaining – but taking the comic tack lessens the tragic impact of the conflicted king’s anguish, especially at the tragic end, torn between his depraved lust and his genuine respect for the prophet of the Lord.

Conductor Stewart Robertson maneuvers the Florida Classical Orchestra adroitly and cogently through Strauss’ extraordinarily complex and busy score, revealing all manner shimmering, lurid colors and unusual, subtle effects. Less subdued emotionally than we’ve heard him, Robertson finally won us over, big time, with his inspired rendering of this towering genius of a score.  

Remaining performances: Friday, January 17 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, January 19 at 2 p.m. at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium, 2901 W. Flagler St., Miami; Thursday, January 23 & Saturday, January 25 at 8 p.m. at the Broward Center, 201 S.W. 5^th Ave., Ft. Lauderdale. 305-854-7890.