| God, how long ago was it? I was maybe in junior high. It was the Tonight
Show and your favorite opera aficionado and mine, Tony Randall, was holding
forth with one of those unending opera anecdotes ("Shaggy Diva Story")
that nobody but he and Charles Nelson Reilly can get away with (and Tony's
are better-organized). This tale concerned a matinee "Salome" Tony had
just seen at the Met on New Year's Day when (so Tony said) subscribers
always send their kids to the opera. (I wonder if this quaint custom
is still observed?) Anyway, isn't it just the coolest idea ever-- 4000
adolescents watching Grace Bumbry in a spangled bra and g-string slipping
the tongue to a papier-mache replica of William Dooley's head?
I think Oscar Wilde would have been pleased. About that time I began to realize that "Salome" must be the queerest opera of them all. Not just the words, I mean. The music too. (Question: how could dull straight guy Richard Strauss write such idiomatic kink? Do you think he used up all his perversity in his work and had none left for real life? Anyway.) You and me and anyone reading this all grew up in the Post-DeMille era. We have that great schlockmeister Cecil B. to thank for the open eroticization of religious topics; in the 20th century, we expect our Bible stories to be heavily laced with sex. You want an example? As a young queer, I couldn't make any emotional sense of the '50's film of The Ten Commandments. To my mind, the Yul Brynner must be the hero-- he's so fucking HOT! Sure, Charleton Heston is yummy too, but he's hardly the Platonic ideal of a skinhead daddy Mr. Brynner is. Besides, as soon as he gets religion, Moses lets his hair go natural and covers up his pecs. How much fun is that? But way back in the 1890's the idea of Biblical sex was way radical. And the divine Oscar didn't even stop there. He made the focus of the sexual theme a 14-year-old virgin princess, violating a few more taboos..As we all know, women, royalty and kids have no interest in sex. Or, if they do, there's something major wrong with them. All right, don't believe me. Just ask Princess Stephanie of Monaco. Okay. Let's just assume that people could live with the idea of an aroused little flower of Judea. They would then expect that the treatment of her erotic experience would, at most, hew to to the contemporary paradigm of wild abandoned, kiss-me-all-over sex-- that is, Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde". But the daughter of Herodias ain't interested in no "nameless, never to part, newly knowing, newly glowing" bullshit. Nope. She's a weird one. She sees him. And the first thing out of her mouth is: He's ugly.He's really ugly.Over to Dr. Strauss. Of the many ways to set the words "Er ist schrecklich," he chooses a downward-plunging arpeggio (high G# to low C#) that forces even the most tasteful sopranos to squeal and grunt like a rutting pig. Then she describes him as "a column of ivory with a scarlet tip." Oh, yeah. The guy looks like a penis. At that point she's singing Jokannaan's own religioso "Let him come to me" motif which in her mouth is sounds like "Lazy Afternoon." But none of this filthy talk sounds disgusting. In fact, the vocal line has that same chastely ecstatic ring as the Presentation of the Rose or Daphne's transformation. But she warms up soon enough, realizing she is in love with the Prophet's body. In the first of many climaxes in this score, Salome cries "Jokanaan!" as the brass intone a broad, slurpy cadence. It's a huge orchestral relaxation-- a synesthetic representation in sound of what a hole feels like as it accepts something really huge. Like, say, a column of ivory.And she talks dirty too. Queer dirty talk. Lists. Why do queers make lists? Beats the fuck out of me, but it's true, as everyone from Susan Sontag to Wayne Koestenbaum have pointed out. Believe me, I know. Half the stuff writers submit to parterre box is lists:
And Strauss's word-setting is something new and dangerous: compare it to some other examples of fin-de-siecle yakking like Manon's or Cio-Cio-San's. The don't sound nearly this aroused, this hyper. That's because their chatter is meant, more or less, for public consumption. Salome's is meant to be hissed into a sexpartner's ear. Many critics have pointed out that one effect of this torrent of verbiage is to aestheicize Salome's lust. But few point out that another effect is to highlight this one body part, isolating it from the rest of his body, and thus objectifying it. She wants to perform one particular act on one particular body part: I want to kiss your mouth. I want to kiss your mouth. Nothing matters, just that mouth. I don't care about you, just that one piece. Straight people, especially straight women don't harp on one body part like this, do they now? Queers do. From here it's only 75 years to Robert Mapplethorpe's Man in Polyester Suit. One perverse relationship in a night seems like short weight, though, doesn't it. I mean, Jesus, by the time you pay for a babysitter and park the car. . . But Mr. Wilde gives us our money's worth Besides the aforementioned "I want to kiss your mouth! I want to kiss your mouth! I want to kiss your mouth!" (Glory Hole Sex), we have the opportunity to sample a veritable smorgasbord of perversity: Salome and Narraboth: "Do this thing for me, and tomorrow I
might smile at you!" (Dominatrix, Public Humiliation) Notice anything all these relationships have in common? Yeah, that's right. All heterosexual. The closest thing to a tender loving relationship in this show is the Page's unrequited crush on Narraboth. (Who among youdoesn't identify with falling in love with a straight guy who doesn't know you're alive?) So who's the "normal" one here-- the Page or Salome? Yeah, right. This character always reminds me of the two boys who dance together at the fade of Pasolini's "Salo"-- an island of blessed gay peace surrounded by hideous "straight" brutality. "Salome" won its first popularity by grossing people out. The opera remains popular because it is a triumph of style. Or, to be more specific, a triumph of camp. The collision of the exotic and the banal is the soul of camp. Like, in the gambling scene of Charles Ludlam's "Camille", someone describes a ballgown as being "just a grand bateau mouche tricked out with Punch-and-Judy Orchids." It's funny because it's just too much. And who understood the more-is-more aesthetic better than Richard Strauss? "Salome" has more "too much" per square inch than any other opera going. (Though I will admit, "Ghosts at Versailles" is certainly in there swinging.) Just like his heroine, Strauss the orchestrator doesn't know when to stop. The result is a sort of aural equivalent of the sensory-overload collages Ken Halliwell and Joe Orton created to camoflage the drab walls of their bed-sitter. Proliferation of detail numbs the mind. Strauss's father the Brahms fan once complained that the score of "Salome" sounded "exactly as if one had ants crawling in one's pants." Coach and mentor Everett Zimmerrein once suggested swallowing two Tylenols before going to "Salome"-- to fend off the inevitable tension headache. I tried it this year, prior to La Malfitano's dazzling Met performance last season, and, hey! it works! If you invite a queer to "Salome", before he answers he'll ask who's singing Herodias. Regina Resnik hated this part, presumably because there's nothing even vaguely resembling an aria. But she was wrong. This role is shorty but meaty, every line a camp showstopper:
One reason I just LOOOOVE Nikolaus Lehnhoff's Met production of "Salome" (besides the humpy leather-clad supers, I mean) is that he gives Herodias so much to do. She even gets to go home with Naaman. A reliable source told me that in the orignal production plan Herod had Herodias, not Salome, killed at the end of the show. ("Not that woman, this woman!") Even without that particular moment of bizzarerie, the old bird has plenty to do: remeber Helga Dernesch slithering onstage through what looks like the service door at the old Zone DK? She peered at Salome, then at the corpse of Narraboth, then at Salome again, as if to say, "I leave you alone for five minutes..." But that's what camp is all about. The sadder the situation, the bigger the gag. And in this show, everyone's a comic: Salome: I want... on a silver platter... Herod: On a silver platter? Of course, on a silver platter. Isn't she adorable? What do you want on a silver platter, my sweet, lovely Salome, the fairest of all the daughters of Judea? What would you have them bring you on a silver platter? Tell me. Anything you want, you shall have. Every treasure in my kingdom is yours. What would you have, Salome? Salome: The... head... of... Jokannan. I am indebted to that zany comedienne Teresa Stratas for revealing
to me the wildest camp highlight and the biggest laugh in "Salome".
It's in the Gotz Friedrich film, you know, the one with the backup chorus
of dancing Lizas and the leftover "Star Trek" sets. Anyway, La Stratas
has just asked to see the prophet. When the guard refuses, she stamps
her foot and she jerks her chin and she snaps, "Hab ihr's nicht gehort?"
Or, as the subtitle translates it, "Maybe you didn't hear me." The key
to Salome's character has been staring us in the face all the time:
she's a Jewish princess. Now, if I were casting a film of "Salome",
my first choices would be Tori Spelling, Keanu
Reeves, Harvey Keitel and Christine Baranski. Nothing is more inclusive than the life of an outsider; being queer means finding nothing strange except normality. "Salome" is the clearest operatic statement of this essential tenet of queer life. Wilde and Strauss fascinate us with the repulsive, knowing we want to be forced to stare even though we know we should turn away. Remember in "Blue Velvet" the scene when Kyle MacLachlan hides in the closet and watches Dennis Hopper and Isabella Rossellini having rough sex? He wants to look away, but he can't, because he knows some part of him finds what's happening fascinating. And, somehow, beautiful. That's how I feel when I hear "Salome."
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