OPERA Magazine, London Toledo Opera: Salome Even in the Met's prime touring years, it visited Toledo only once: a 1910 Lohengrin with Jadlowker and Fremstad. For fifty seasons now TOLEDO OPERA has graced the city. In its current incarnation in the intimate late Victorian Valentine Theatre, it owes its place among North America's finest smaller companies to the high artistic standards and casting shrewdness of the Intendant Renay Conlin. Admirably, Salome (March 14) deployed a full orchestra: 70 pieces, missing only the organ under "geheimnisvolle Musik". As usual here, Thomas Conlin's astute conducting and the high quality of the Toledo Symphony assured a fine performance: in a departure, they sat onstage within the confines of Clayton G. Peterson's ingenious playing space, incorporating an overhead bridge which Salome and Herod mounted at different times and with Maestro Conlin on a platform. At one point Amy Johnson's lithe Salome demurely posed at his feet, one of many keenly observed touches in James Marvel's insightful staging, which emphasized personal contact. One cavil: Marvel and Johnson underestimated the weight of a human head, having Salome lightly carry her prize around with one hand like Hamlet with Yorick's skull. Johnson
wields a Musetta voice: she is not a "big house" Salome,
but gave a very creditably phrased and acted performance despite
occasional shrill vocal climaxes. She moved seductively and well
but was ill-served by choreography incorporating six back-up dancers:
rarely apt, and fatally misconceived in a small playing area. As
in Mattia Preti's 1660 "Feast of Herod” – gracing
Toledo's phenomenal Art Museum alongside Rembrandt and Turner – the
Tetrarch and his scornful wife proved younger and sexier than the
usual raddled pensioners. Adam Klein, straddling lyric and Spieltenor Fachs,
performed capably. Deanne Meek (a boozily punkish henna'd Herodias)
wielded the best instrument onstage. Bradley Garvin's prophet,
suitably tall and pale, boasted fine resonance if somewhat rough
register extremes.Marc Schreiner's lyrically sung Narraboth was
not the usual braying uniformed dolt but a poetic sort whose willowy
good looks escaped none of Judea's royal family (Herodias managed
to grope the corpse). Except for a disappointing bass in the First
Nazarene's show-stopping music, the small roles were creditably
taken. Standouts included Jin Hwan Byun's bright-toned First Jew
and the strongly voiced First Soldier of Patrick Blackwell, doubling
as the executioner. Aubry Hagadorn's Slave introduced a telling
note of vocal purity. The Conlins have long bravely programmed at least one twentieth century opera or relative rarity in every four-slot season (Candide ends this one): not a "safe" policy in a hard-hit small industrial city. Flying in the face of the timidity that has rendered next year's North American offerings an indistinguishable wash of Barbiere, Bohème and Butterfly, Toledo Opera's line-up boasts Falstaff and The Rape of Lucretia. DAVID SHENGOLD |