It emasculates the drama with its
pervasive prettiness, its lazy felicitousness where it ought to be
monstrous and terrifying, its reminiscences of Mendelssohn, Tchaikowsky
and "Little Egypt." The lascivious and hieratic dance, the dance of the
seven veils, is represented by a _valse lente_. Oftentimes the score
verges perilously on circus-music, recalls the sideshows at county
fairs. No doubt, in so doing it weakens the odor exuded by Wilde's play.
But if we must have an operatic "Salome," it is but reasonable to demand
that the composer in his music express the sexual cruelty and frenzy
symbolized in the figure of the dancer. And the Salome of Strauss's
score is as little the Salome of Wilde as she is the Salome of Flaubert
or Beardsley or Moreau or Huysmans. One cannot help feeling her
eminently a buxom, opulent Berliner, the wife, say, of the proprietor of
a large department store; a heavy lady a good deal less "daemonisch" and
"perverse" than she would like to have it appear. But there are moments
when one feels as though Strauss's heroine were not even a Berliner, or
of the upper middle class. There are moments when she is plainly Kaethi,
the waitress at the Muenchner Hofbrauehaus. And though she declares to
Jokanaan that "it is his mouth of which she is enamored," she delivers
the words in her own true-hearted, unaffected brogue.
Pages:
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54