The costumes, if not so much the set (both designed by Leslie Travers), show a court that could be Edwardian England or Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany, with the men all in military uniforms. Slater directed a blood-curdling Wozzeck here, last seen in 2011, and many parts of the creative team are reunited, including conductor David Robertson and tenor Robert Brubaker, as a magnificent Herod. There are comic moments in the libretto, to be sure, but too many people laugh in the wrong places at parts of the opera that are, or should be, the most disturbing.Įnglish director Daniel Slater’s powerful staging, updated to the turn of the 20th century and based on the sexual identity theories and dream interpretation of Sigmund Freud, eventually silenced most of the laughter.

Why do people laugh so much in performances of Richard Strauss’s Salome? If anything the amount of tittering increased in the performance of the company’s new production heard on Thursday night. Alex Penda in the title role and Ryan McKinny as Jochanaan in Santa Fe Opera’s production of Strauss’s “Salome.” Photo: Ken Howard

Santa fe opera marriage of figaro