In the beginning was an episode from the Bible – the dance of the princess of Judea Salome to charm her father-in-law Herod who offers her the head of John the Baptist – told by the evangelists Mathieu and Marc. Oscar Wilde makes a drama out of it, Salome (released in French in 1891), which serves as the framework for Richard Strauss’s third opera, created in 1905 and offered today at the Opéra Bastille.
At the heart of her work, the madness and above all the extreme, sexual and death desire that inspired the American director Lydia Steier paintings that are alternately decadent, very bloody and gloomy. At the baton, one of the great experts of this repertoire, the Australian Simone Young who welcomed us in an office with a view on the top floor of the Bastille to discuss this opera, Salome, which she loves. And it’s a pleasure to speak with her – in French, quite natural for this polyglot – so passionate and generous is she.
Franceinfo Culture: Despite your vast repertoire, you are always presented above all as an expert on Strauss and Wagner…
Simone Young: It’s strange because the two composers are still associated even though they are very different. Yes, I love this repertoire and it started when I was a teenager. Salome (by Strauss) is the first opera I saw, I was thirteen or fourteen. After that, I read Oscar Wilde’s drama in French (its original version) and then in English. And then I played Salome when I started out as vocal coach at the Sydney Opera House… I was delighted to perform this music. And I love the German language, which is kind of my second mother tongue.
What does this musical universe bring you?
I adore dramas, I adore the extravagance of this enormous orchestra… It’s true, it’s “luxury” music, for both of them… I mentioned Strauss. But also of Wagner: the Tetralogy Where Tristan or Parsifal that I conducted here before the summer, it was so exhilarating! For me, if I don’t have two Wagners and two Strauss in a season, it’s a poor season (laughter). But that doesn’t mean that I don’t like Italian music, French music (laughter)! I did French operas, I even recorded them.
you lead Salome at Bastille. What appeals to you the most in this opera, so innovative for its time?
There are three things. It is first of all a perfect opera, with a clear, direct architecture. We start in a terrible world, a world of blood and violence to arrive in a world of love, even if it is a dark, corrupt love. There is a line. It begins with the clarinet alone, the treble, the flageolets (kinds of flutes, editor’s note) accompanied by the strings, and it ends with the whole orchestra, more than a hundred people: all the brass, all the woodwinds, the harps, all the strings in unison. There is such extravagance! As a conductor, you can almost bathe in this music.
The second important thing is that I love singers. However, much more than any other repertoire, the music of Wagner and Strauss is demanding with them. I love these singers: they are sensitive – almost too sensitive – and courageous, because they face this very difficult drama. Finally, the third thing is the physical dimension: when we play this music, we feel it through the audience. I believe it is impossible to attend a performance of Salome without being touched. Whether we find all this awful or whether we find it very sensual, in the public we are really completely in the drama.
The spectator is moreover struck by this music which is immediately in the action. It’s a kind of flash that lasts 1h40: it never stops, even the song does not offer respite…
It’s true, there is no respite, especially for poor Salomé (played by Elza van den Heever), who, in this staging, is on stage from the start to the end. , it is enormous !
And even for you: your gesture of direction of the orchestra is besides very physical, it is very sporting… How does one direct such an opera?
Yes it’s sporty, it’s true. It’s like a journey that’s a little long: from the start you have to know where you’re going to end it. It can be a little longer here, we can have a detour there. But we know where we are going. It’s not like being in a tunnel, it’s really a journey because we look to the right, we look to the left, we hear everything, but we are really in the music and this as soon as we enter the pit .
There is Strauss’s music and then what it says. Sexual desire, madness, death are at the heart of Salome, underlined by Lydia Steier’s deliberately decadent and deadly staging. How do you carry this theme musically?
I believe Strauss has already done this for me. Everything is already there in the music. Take, before the end, the moment when Salome says of Iokanaan, the prophet, whose head she had cut off: I kissed my lips, what is that taste on your lips? Is it that of love or is it that of death? When she sings the taste of love, we are in G major, it is the simplest, prettiest key. And when she sings the taste of death, there is this note on the heckelphone, the lowest instrument of the oboe family, which Strauss loved. It’s very low, not at all pretty, very nasal, a sound a little outside normal sounds, a very special color. And there’s a little glissando in the first violin that you play with one finger. It’s dirty, there is already disgust in the sound.
What was your role as conductor at that time?
It is the conductor’s choice whether or not to emphasize these moments. And for example, in the famous Dance of the Seven Veils, there is this melody (she sings the orientalizing melody) that everyone has in mind, but also the double bass which expresses the danger that comes from the music of love of Iokanaan. But it’s more serious, longer, more extensive, darker. And it remains “under the music”, if I may say so. It’s as if the shadow of death remained even behind these very well-known and simple folk music. And I almost always choose to take these slightly different elements and bring them out of the overall sound of the orchestra.
One last question, concerning the presence of women in the roles of conductor at the Paris Opera. You were a pioneer in opera around the world, and especially here since you were the first female conductor to conduct an opera production at the Paris Opera…
Yes, I was the first woman here in this house! And I’m proud of that! But that was almost thirty years ago.
Director Netia Jones (The Marriage of FigaroJanuary 2022) spoke in these columns of a very low representation of women in key roles in productions at the Paris Opera…
But that is changing now! At the moment, Speranza Scappucci is there, in Bastille, she is directing The Capulets and the Montagues, she is really a specialist in belcanto music. And Suzanna Mälkki was there too. Yes, it’s starting to change, all over the world. People no longer talk about us as female chefs, but as chefs. And that’s fine.
“Salomé” at the Opéra Bastille, until November 5, 2022