`It's like dying and going to heaven: it's just divine singing. You wait all your life to be able to sing that kind of music. It's a great, great piece." In her forthcoming portrayal of Salome during Opera Ireland's spring season production, American soprano Karen Notare could certainly not be accused of lack of enthusiasm for Strauss's feverish score - with its libretto based almost word for word on Oscar Wilde's setting of the biblical tale of the 16-year-old princess who demands, and gets, the head of John the Baptist on a plate.
Notare has attracted nothing but praise for her previous appearances in Ireland, bringing to her performances in Leoncavallo's Zaza and Mascagni's Il Piccolo Marat at Wexford Festival Opera, and Verdi's Lady Macbeth in Dublin, consistent beauty of tone allied to a genuinely theatrical approach.
This will be the first time Irish audiences have seen her in German repertoire, however - in fact, it will be the first time Irish audiences have seen Salome at all, for the piece, which was first unveiled at Dresden's Semper Opera in 1905, has never been performed here. Why not? Who knows? Long regarded as a musical and sexual shocker, Strauss's Salome is now a familiar sight on the world stage. She may even have mellowed a little with age - like many contemporary productions, Opera Ireland's will skip the once-obligatory nudity for the heroine's Dance of the Seven Veils - but the score remains as powerful and provocative as ever. Notare says she respects the difficulties of the role, but are they primarily vocal, or dramatic?
"Musically, it's very difficult to learn, and because you're on stage every minute, and you have to go from very high notes to very low ones in great leaps, you have to keep your wits about you," she says. "But it's important, too, that the character is not made into a caricature. Some people portray her as a nymphomaniac bitch, and she's not. She's basically a young girl who has everything; she's rich, she's pretty, and yet there's some void inside of herself that she can't quite fill. And one day she hears the voice of this prophet and it touches something that resonates inside of her.
"For me the essence of the entire piece is when she says to him, at the very end, `look what you made me do - didn't I tell you this would happen?' She may be an exotic eastern princess who is as pure as the moon - but she has learned the art of manipulation from watching Herod and Herodias in action." While she is convinced of the work's greatness, Notare is reluctant to interpret its fin-desiecle sensibility in the light of the present. "We're always looking to great masterpieces to teach us something when, really, if a work of theatre strikes you on any level - moves you - that should be enough. But if you want to search for a more universal significance in this piece, it's true that it's about Christianity rising up and Salome following John the Baptist in that direction; if you consider all the decadence that precedes the action in the opera, it certainly represents the death of one thing, and the emergence of something purer and finer."
Opera Ireland's production of Salome will be directed by Joelle Lauwers and designed by Louis Desire; the RTE Concert Orchestra will be conducted by Laurent Wagner. The piece will be sung in German with English subtitles, and performances will be given in the Gaiety Theatre on April 11th, 13th, 15th and 7th, at 7.30 p.m.
