In both its storyline – culminating in the anti-heroine’s kissing of the mouth of the freshly decapitated Jochanaan – and the blistering intensity of its music, Richard Strauss’s Salome pushes extremes. And with its dream cast and the superlative conducting of Antonio Pappano, it would be difficult to imagine a performance more gripping than last night’s at the Barbican, the second of two London Symphony Orchestra concert performances over the weekend.
Everybody has their favourite Salome, but Asmik Grigorian has for some years been up there with the greatest. Her voice is commanding rather than voluminous, but also suitably alluring for this erotically charged role. Few sopranos today are able to invest Salome’s line “Now I have kissed your mouth at last Jochanaan” with such decadent sensuality, while her sphinx-like observation that the mystery (or secret) of love is mightier than the mystery of death is adumbrated with a subtlety to die for (so to speak).
