This time you’re on Salome’s side

When Richard Strauss’ opera “Salome” was new, nearly 100 years ago, it shocked and it seduced. The story, as interpreted by Oscar Wilde, features a pouty biblical teenager who rebelliously lusts after John the Baptist, strips for her lecherous stepfather Herod, then demands the head of John on a platter. In a state of necrophiliac ecstasy, she lasciviously kisses John’s bloody mouth to the disgust of all. In his score, Strauss used all that was modern, noisy and dissonant in the new music of his time, but he coated his opera in waltzing delirium and creamy sweetness that verges on kitsch.

“Salome,” now standard repertory, no longer shocks. We’ve seen it all, including opera stars (Maria Ewing, Catherine Malfitano) willing to go all the way in the “Dance of the Seven Veils.” We’ve heard it all, the Montserrat Caballes and Jessye Normans who may not come close physically to the Lolita ideal, but who have ravished the ear unforgettably. In an age when “Boogie Nights” and slasher films are mainstream entertainment, opera audiences the world ‘round take Strauss’ 95-minute, one-act opera pretty much in stride, then go to dinner.

Certainly, there is little scandalous in the new production of “Salome” presented by Opera Pacific on Tuesday night at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. But it does take an odd tack on the opera. It makes these characters almost normal. So nervous is the company about propriety that at the moment when Salome does drop her seventh veil, there is concerted action on stage to immediately cover up the dancer who doubles the singer and remains topless for but a fraction of a second.

The set, by Tom Goodchild, is meant to suggest Wilde’s day, not Herod’s, but it also appears not far from our own. Its gilded palm trees and staircase could be in the atrium of a corporate hotel, except for the cistern in which John is imprisoned. A blood-red moon is seen off in the distance, through windows. The lighting is like a restaurant’s, dim and unimaginative, slighting visual details, detaching the audience from the stage.

Salome first bolts on stage, frisky, curious, determined, more the fresh-faced girl off the farm than the sexually depraved teenager in Herod’s court. She ogles Jochanaan (John the Baptist) the way she might an exotic breed of heifer. Even her final ecstasy is tenuous -- a determination to conquer her own revulsion toward Jochanaan’s gory head.

Making her American opera debut, the Norwegian soprano, Turid Karlsen, sounds as fresh and sturdy as she acts. But something odd does happen in Ian Judge’s not very imaginative or evocative production. Karlsen’s freshness never diminishes. She is completely in command of Strauss’ punishing music, and her voice is thrilling. And by the end, she captivates, winning us over not so much as Salome but as a singer mastering great music with aplomb. Seldom is an audience so encouraged to sympathize with Salome.

The strongest dramatic performance is from Allan Glassman, an unusually charismatic Herod. Milena Kitic sings Herodias imposingly. Christopher Robertson is a bedraggled Jochanaan. Patrick Marques is the dreamy Narraboth. Conductor John DeMain leads a lean, dynamic performance.

A coltish Erin Basta is the dancer who removes the seven veils. Nina Warren, who performs the title role Friday and Sunday, will undertake Sergio Trujillo’s elaborately choreography -- part striptease, part belly dance -- herself.

*

‘Salome’

Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: Tonight, Friday and Saturday, 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.

Price: $20 to $125

Info: (800) 346-7372