Salome Ever and Never the Same (Re)productions of a Canonized Opera Hedda Høgåsen-Hallesby A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of Musicology Faculty of Humanities University of Oslo 2013 Contents Acknowledgments v Introduction 1 The Opera Text, Performance Texts, and Feminist Practices 5 Expanding Archives and Changing Methods 8 Synopsis of the Opera 11 Outline of the Dissertation 13 Chapter 1: Ways of Looking 17 Introduction: Reflecting Eyeballs 17 Leitmotifs: An Operatic Spotlight? 19 The Ambiguous Eye: Looking at Salome Looking 22 Turning the Gaze Back at Itself: Egoyan’s Production 29 A Visual Event 31 Supervising the Surveillance 32 Multiple Exposures 33 Doubles, Simultaneity, and Coexistence: Herheim’s Production 39 A Mediating Telescope and a Perforated Moon 40 Conclusion: Toward Audio-Visual Exploratoriums 43 Chapter 2: Voices, Melodies, and the Art of Hearing 46 Introduction: Hearing Voices 46 “Deine Stimme is wie Musik”: Voices, Materiality, and Sensibility 48 Approaching Sensuous Physicalities 48 The “Lärm” from the Banquet Hall 51 The Prophetic Voice 54 Entering the Listener 57 Melodiousness 61 Meanings of Melodiousness 62 A Rhetoric of Desire 67 Conclusion: Salome, Sense, and Sensibility 69 Chapter 3: Archival Presences and (Dis)embodied Mediations 72 Introduction: Video in and of Opera 72 Simulating Realities 75 Production of Presence 84 Archives of/in Motion 91 Conclusion: Ongoing Oscillations 94 Chapter 4: A Silent Executioner, Open Spaces, and Performative Performances 97 Introduction: Looking for and from the Margins 97 Loose Texts: Naaman’s Existence Prior to Performance 100 Naaman’s Existence in McVicar’s Production 104 Stickiness: Bringing Naaman into Being 107 A Reflection of Sympathy 111 A Naked Statement 114 A Puzzling Beauty 117 Performative Polyphonies 119 Conclusion: Toward New Interpretations 125 Chapter 5: The Rise and Fall of Jochanaan 129 Introduction: The Smile 129 Authentic Myths and the Problem of the Body: Hall’s Production 132 A Defining Question of Presentation 134 Featuring the Diva 135 An Object of Difference 137 Appearing in Music 141 Rising to Stage and Falling to Earth 147 The Body as Situation 149 Conclusion: Normality Negotiated 151 Chapter 6: One Dance, Three Spaces, Seven Veils, and Countless Versions 155 Introduction: Iconic Scenes in Digital Archives 155 The Icon as Image and Idol 157 Images of Controlled Otherness: Hysteria 159 Images of Controlled Otherness: Orientalism 162 An Idol of Subversive Performance 165 Salome as a Feminist Icon 166 The F(r)iction of the Dance 168 An Open, Unified Space 169 Production of Operatic Spaces 172 Seven Open Rooms: McVicar’s Version 176 Claustrophobic Chambers: Konwitschny’s Version 181 Outer Spaces: Herheim’s Version 184 Conclusion: Salome’s Dance, Feminist Interpretations, and Views from Elsewhere 189 Chapter 7: Filling the Gap(e) and Bringing to Life: Canonization, Provocation, and Convention 195 Introduction: Live or Let Die 195 Reaching the End 200 Regieoper and Recycled Shocks 204 Holy Scriptures 209 Archives, Commentaries, and Unruly Repetitions 215 A New Scene, Already There 220 Conclusion: (Re)Productive Limits and Living Exhibitions 224 Bibliography of Works Cited 230 List of Seen Productions 253 Acknowledgments This study exists thanks to a generous dissertation scholarship from the University of Oslo that was provided by the Centre for Gender Research. At the end of this journey, there are several others to whom I owe my gratitude as well. My deepest appreciation goes to Erik Steinskog, who for years now has served as a mentor and a model of intellectual originality, constructive curiosity, and critical rigor. Erik has been a supportive supervisor since the very beginning of my master’s study and has always seen more in my work than I have been able to see for myself. I am extremely grateful for the generous way in which he shared his insights with me and encouraged his students always to ask, look, and listen critically. For the PhD project, I was allowed to take on another supervisor as well, which means that I have also benefitted from the broad knowledge of Jorunn Økland. Jorunn introduced me to the interesting issue of canonicity, which has proven to be a productive aspect of my approach to the phenomenon of opera production. Trained as a theologian, Jorunn has long demonstrated the value of an interdisciplinary mindset in one’s academic practice and directed me to perspectives outside of my immediate disciplinary comfort zone that have resulted in important theoretical insights. That said, Jorunn was also the person who most insistently reminded me of the importance of letting the material guide the process, which I always appreciated. Thanks also go to my excellent copyeditor, Nils Nadeau, who improved not only the eloquence of my English but the clarity of my content with his critical and insightful questions. His proficiency made the last stretch of this journey surprisingly pleasurable. v The Centre for Gender Research at the University of Oslo has been a very open, warm, and inclusive workplace, due to its genuinely interdisciplinary environment and unique fellows. I am very grateful to both the academic and the administrative staffs there for years of vibrant discussions, collaborations, and friendship. Special thanks go to the research group “Canonicity, Gender, and Critique: The Hermeneutics of Gender and Canon Transformations,” which was supported by The Research Council of Norway and included Hilde Bondevik, Tone Brekke, Ingeborg W. Owesen, and Stefanie Schön, in addition to Jorunn Økland and myself. I am grateful to my fellow PhD students in musicology for their inspiring discussions and valuable company: Marion Hestholm, Peter Edwards, Håvard Enge, and Ragnhild Brøvig- Hanssen. Special thanks go to Ragnhild for her thorough readings of chapter 1 and 3, and to Peter for his comments on chapter 4. Thanks also go to Arnfinn Bø-Rygg for his intellectually stimulating PhD courses and to Susan McClary, who, during her time as Professor II at UiO, offered valuable feedback and invaluable support, particularly during the early stages of this project. I was fortunate to spend the spring term of 2010 as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. I am very grateful to the supportive and insightful Barrie Thorne at the Department of Women and Gender Studies there, who invited me, helped out with the practical arrangements, and allowed me into her research seminar on dissertation writing with an emphasis on women, gender, and sexuality studies. Thanks go to all of the brilliant participants at this seminar, who shared their broad knowledge and gave me thoughtful comments on an early draft of chapter 5. Special thanks go to Anastasia Kayiatos for her contagious enthusiasm and constructive criticism. My warmest thanks go to Mary Ann Smart at the Department of Music at Berkeley as well, who read and reviewed several of my drafts and was remarkably generous with her time and support. She also gave me the opportunity to be part of her graduate seminar on the history and theory of opera production, which influenced my project considerably. I want to thank all of the members of this exclusive little group of graduate students, who contributed to making this course so amazing. The Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund, Hedvig and Kristian Winterhjelms legat, and Centre for Gender Research at UiO financially supported my stay at Berkeley, for which I am very grateful. vi Caryl Clark at the University of Toronto deserves thanks for inviting me into the working group “Operatics,” for her warm hospitality during my stay in Canada in April 2010, and for helping me to arrange a viewing of the archival recording of Atom Egoyan’s Salome. My thanks also go to the Canadian Opera Company for giving me access to this material. Thanks go to David Levin, Clemens Risi, Brian Gilliam, and Polina Dimova for sharing their unpublished manuscripts with me and for their enthusiasm in discussing this topic. Thanks go to Live Hov for her open door and warm interest, and for reading and commenting on chapter 3. Chapter 3 also benefitted from a discussion about “liveness” in the research group “Clouds and Concerts: Mediation and Mobility in Contemporary Music Culture,” led by Anne Danielsen and Arnt Maasø––thanks go to them for letting me join this discussion. Parts of this thesis have been presented at several conferences and seminars; I cannot mention them all here but simply want to state that I am very grateful for the opportunities to speak and for all of the valuable comments and critical questions I have received in these sessions. I will mention one, however––the symposium “Opera, Exoticism, and Visual Culture: The Fin de Siècle and Its Legacy,” arranged at the University of London in September 2008 by Hyunseon Lee and Naomi Segal. My paper was placed in a session with three other presenters who later has become an inspiring, international Salome group: Clair Rowden in Cardiff, Anne Sivuoja-Gunaratnam in Helsinki, and Caryl Clark in Toronto. We gave a new Salome session at the 16th Biennial Conference on 19th-Century Music in Southampton in July 2010, and the fruit of this inspiring collaboration, the book Performing Salome, Revealing Stories, will be published by Ashgate in September 2013. Thanks go to each of these scholars but especially to Clair for her enormous work on editing this book, wherein parts of chapter 6 are included in my contribution. I am also grateful to have had the opportunity to publish parts of chapter 5 in Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning (no. 3, 2010) and parts of chapter 7 in Nytt norsk tidsskrift (no. 1, 2013). This project also depended on the endeavors of the fabulous producers, directors, and performers who have made Salome and her mysteries alive and present, both in music and on stage.