EIF: Salome
Queen’s Hall – 14/08/2022
Malin Byström: a Salome for our time.
This was my conclusion at the end of Strauss’ ‘Salome’ at the Usher Hall on Sunday night. It was a superb performance by the Bergen Philharmonic under the baton of Ed Gardner, who is also music director of Bergen Opera. We of course remember the very good concert performance of Peter Grimes in 2017 that Bergen brought to the Festival so we were expecting great things and we weren’t disappointed. The large orchestra were very good; indeed the whole cast were strong, but above all Salome. The opera relies on a great singer as Salome and Malin Byström rose to the occasion. She dominated the evening both vocally and visually with a lovely white wedding-style dress for her early arias, replaced by a vivid red dress for her steamy scenes with Jochannan. Over the years I have seen many fine Salomes at Covent Garden, Gwyneth Jones, Maria Ewing, Karita Mattila, but I believe Malin Byström compares well with them all. The Royal Opera clearly agree with my judgement since they have booked her as Salome for the autumn season, and I will be booking my seat for that fully-staged production by David McVicar, Scotland’s world leading opera producer.
Of course a concert performance can’t hope to give you the visual flair of a fully-staged performance but it does make you focus more on the music and the voices. For example, the ‘dance of the seven veils’ is one of the more exciting parts of the staged opera; will Salome strip off or won’t she? But tonight the stage was empty of singers so we really focussed on the music, and guess what, it’s really exciting music, ending in a climax when Salome finally strips.
In other parts of the opera the stage was occupied by up to a dozen singers backing Malin Byström, notably a very fine Jochanaan sung by Danish baritone Johan Reuter, a regular at Covent Garden, a superb Herod sung by Gerhard Siegel who Edinburgh audiences will remember from his performances in the concert performances of Wagner’s Ring. Katerinas Dalayman was a very good Herodias and other cast members were well sung. The singers also did their best to act their characters and of course our understanding was aided by very good surtitles.
‘Salome’ is performed straight through in one hour forty five minutes, quite a challenge for old men like me, but it went quickly and kept the attention of a very full audience at the Usher Hall. At the end there was a roar of appreciation and a standing ovation for Malin Byström; we truly have seen ‘A Salome for our Time’. I have now seen all three operas at this 2022 Festival, a superb staged performance of ‘Rusalka’ from Garsington, with a stunning performance by Natalia Romaniw on the first night (though sadly she didn’t make the second or third night due to illness). Brian Bannatyne-Scott reviewed for us the excellent ‘Fidelio’ conducted by Donald Runnicles and finally an excellent ‘Salome’ tonight. As I said in my preview of the festival, it is a thin opera programme but at least it was a high quality programme in its delivery. Let’s hope next year we can get back to a fuller opera programme, including Scottish Opera who are currently staging a highly successful ‘Candide’ in Glasgow (see Donal Hurley’s review). It remains something of a mystery why Scottish Opera did not participate this year, particularly as their ‘Falstaff’ last year was a star of the festival. Let’s hope our incoming Festival Director, Nicola Benedetti, our first ever Scottish director, will make the Edinburgh Festival more “Scottish”; after all, one of its key objectives is to “bring the best of Scottish culture to the world”.
Cover photo: Andrew Perry
