'Salome' / 'La Finta Giardiniera': My Heart Belongs to Daddy

Charles T. Downey, Powerful “Salome” and problematic Mozart at Santa Fe Opera
The Classical Review, August 8

Mozart, La Finta Giardiniera, S. Karthäuser, A. Penda, Freiburger Barockorchester, R. Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi, 2012)

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. 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.

English 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...

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SEE ALSO:
Zachary Woolfe, Santa Fe Opera Offers ‘The Daughter of the Regiment,’ ‘Rigoletto’ and ‘Salome’ (New York Times, August 7)

John Stege, Salome Agonistes (Santa Fe Reporter, July 22)

James M. Keller, Salome — hell hath no fury (Santa Fe New Mexican, July 19)