Richard STRAUSS (1864-1949)
Salome (1905) [98:06]
Laila Palme-Anderson (soprano) Salome; Ragnar Ulfung (tenor) Herodes; Barbro Ericson (mezzo) Herodias; Curt Appelgren (baritone) Jokanaan; John-Eric Jacobson (tenor) Narraboth; Eva Pilat (mezzo) A Page of Herodias; Lars Cleveman (tenor), Göran Eliasson (tenor), Mikko Pulkkinen (tenor), Roland Häggström (tenor), Peter Kadiev (bass) Five Jews; Jerker Arvidson (bass) First Nazarene; Lars Kullenbo (tenor) Second Nazarene; Gunnar Lundberg Jr (Bass) First Soldier; Anders Lorentzson (bass) Second Soldier; Ragne Wahlroth (bass) Cappadocian; Ingela Malmsö-Inge (soprano) A Slave.
Royal Swedish Opera Orchestra/Berislav Klobučar
rec. 3rd October, 1990. Kungliga Teatern/Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm.
Libretto with texts and English translation
STERLING CDA1843/1844-2 [77:21] + [20:45]
This new release of a live performance of Salome documents what must have felt like a memorable evening in the theater in Stockholm in 1990. Laila Palme-Anderson was a name that was not generally well known outside of her native Sweden. I was fortunate enough to attend one of her performances of Salome in a production that was staged in Montreal in 1985 so I was most happy to relive that memory with this CD issue. I recall her being a riveting performer in the title role, and she had a voice that sounded uncannily like the distinctive-sounding German soprano Ursula Schroder-Feinen.
It is quite wonderful of Sterling to release these old live document recordings every now and then. No-one could pretend that this would replace the studio achievements of Solti, Leinsdorf and Karajan, in this opera, but for a memento of singers who would otherwise be left undocumented this will do admirably. The sound engineering places the music in a very natural opera house perspective that is front row center. The voices are all set within the same natural sounding acoustic as the orchestra. This means there is no unnatural spotlight miking of the singers which usually results them being too close, in a separate acoustic from the rest of the musicians; a common failing of many studio-based recordings. There is, however, a great deal of stage movement noise and an incessant high pitched mechanical noise which I take to be a sort of tape hiss that is present throughout although after a while this noise receded into the background and I rarely noticed it during the majority of the opera.
Laila Anderson-Palme begins her Salome with a girlish, light silvery sound that is in keeping with the character. As her voice grows into the scene with Jokanaan, where she obsessively praises the various beauties she discovers in him, her assumption continues to grow in stature although occasionally a slight hectoring sound creeps into the top of her range. By the time she reaches the long final scene she is sailing at top form. She sings much of it in a very inward way as if she is singing to herself withinin her own world. Strauss’ wide leaps between registers are attacked with excellence and throughout the scene she is thoroughly riveting. The wonderful Swedish singer Curt Appelgren sings Jokanaan. Some UK readers may recall his performance as Bottom in Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Glyndebourne in 1981: an exceptional performance which was eventually was released on DVD. Bottom was a character which suited his warm, appealing sound that has many baritonal qualities about it. Here his voice remains warm and ingratiating in a sort of genial Papageno-like way. I find him lovely sounding, but essentially it is the wrong sound to convey Oscar Wilde’s imposing view of a religious fanatic. He is also somewhat overwhelmed by Strauss’s score when he curses Salome. Ragnar Ulfung is a vivid Herod who occasionally has to lunge around for his notes but in a live performance that can be quite effective so this is not really a valid criticism. Barbro Ericson really hits the jackpot as Herodias. She is outsized and over-the-top in all the right ways. Her voice was still in splendid condition when this recording was made so I definitely prefer her over Astrid Varnay who was in tattered voice in Karl Böhm’s film version of Salome on DVD.
Berislav Klobučar conducts a luminous and burnished reading, reveling in the oriental luxuriousness of Strauss’ score. His rendition of The Dance of the Seven Veils can stand alongside Kempe’s as one of the most gorgeous versions out there. This very retiring maestro avoided publicity as much as possible, which meant he had very little exposure by the record companies in those days. His Strauss readings in particular were achieved with great beauty and glowing sound wherever he was performing. He was sometimes criticized for not driving the orchestra forward as much as Solti or some others but this was more than made up for by the beauty he found in even the most bombastic sections. I fondly recall his performance of Die Frau Ohne Schatten which was my introduction to this very complex work. The Stockholm opera orchestra obviously enjoys working under him and they play spiritedly although there are the inevitable glitches here and there in a live performance, particularly some ragged playing from the brass section during the final 20 minutes.
The CD has been well produced by Sterling and contains two booklets. One with the German libretto German with an English translation. The other booklet contains a long article about Wilde’s Salome and a very in-depth interview with Ms Anderson-Palme in which she shares many amusing anecdotes regarding the various productions of Salome that she was involved in during her career. There is an especially interesting anecdote regarding the production of Salome in Montreal that I saw her in which brought it all back to me so many years later.
Mike Parr
