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Salome, Sacrilege and the Censor

Opera and the Bible: an unholy alliance?

…hearing it. Its ubiquity was further enhanced by the celebrated violinist Paganini – reputed, of course, to owe his extraordinary virtuoso powers to a pact with the devil – who wrote a set of variations on it for the G string of the violin. Still in Italy and the Old Testament, an early Donizetti opera, Il diluvio universale, recounts a version of Noah’s Flood; it was recorded by Opera Rara in 2005 and generally found to be a bit of a damp squib.

There is a whole pile of biblical operas by the Russian Anton Rubinstein, legendary piano virtuoso, founder of the Moscow conservatoire and compulsive composer. As if to prove that the devil does, indeed, get the best tunes – his secular opera The Demon (1875) has been revived by Wexford and the Kirov, while no-one has yet ventured near Paradise Lost (1855), The Tower of Babel (1870), Judas Maccabaeus (1875), The Sulamite (1883), Moses (1892) and Christus (1894). An earlier, much more obscure Russian, Alexander Serov (1820-71) made an astonishing composing debut at forty-three with Judith, which was one of Tchaikovsky’s favorite operas. Judith was so successful that Serov was granted a pension from the Tsar. Despite the advocacy of the famous Russian bass, Chaliapin, it has never been performed in the West and fell out of the repertoire after the Russian Revolution. A recording is, however, available: it reveals a powerful, if crude work, that anticipates Mussorgsky’s crazed tsar Boris Godunov in its depiction of Holofernes, and an oriental flavour that was to re-surface in Borodin’s Prince Igor.

Another marginal work that has enjoyed strong critical advocacy in the past is the Danish symphonist Carl Nielsen’s Saul and David (1902); but, despite a 1970’s recording with the starry partnership of Elisabeth Söderström and Boris Christoff, it does not seem to grace the stage outside Denmark.

Revelations

Perhaps the most intriguing buried treasure is an opera by Eugen d’Albert (1864-1932) who, though born in Germany, was of Geordie and French parentage. (His most famous opera, Tiefland, could be described as a 'ménage à trois' of Pagliacci, Carmen and Tristan und Isolde). Dating from 1916, Die toten Augen takes place around the events of Palm Sunday and concerns a Roman senator’s blind wife whose sight is restored by Jesus. But it is there that the biblical connection ends. She goes on to kiss the wrong man, who is then killed by her husband. To avoid identifying the killer, she stares into the sun, blinding herself again! A recent recording reveals this work to be disturbing and highly perfumed, a slightly more restrained kid sister of Salome.

Interesting though these pieces are, they cannot compare to the wealth of well-known biblical music contained within the oratorio tradition: Handel’s vividly dramatic English works, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Elgar and Walton. Some of these scores are…

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