It would be a dull soprano who could not make something exciting of the title role in Richard Strauss's Salome.
It calls for high-pitched, frenetic voicing combined with a childlike embodiment of evil as well as an ability to perform theatre's most notorious solo dance.
In André Engel's 21-year-old production for WNO, revived for the first time at the Millennium Centre as part of the company's spring season, not a single veil is dropped, let alone seven.
Instead, Salome's dance before Herod, her infatuated stepfather, mimics Isadora Duncan as part tease, part self-indulgence, and Swedish-American newcomer Erika Sunnegardh makes a tantalising fist of it.
She's pretty impressive vocally, too, investing her big finale with reserves of power and depths of depravity as everyone looks on, some with binoculars.
By this time, John the Baptist is a head on a platter, but in anatomically complete form he is sung with prophetic fire by Robert Hayward, performing at short notice for the indisposed Matthew Best.
WNO seem able to cast the opera with aplomb, this time finding a shadowy Herodias in Sally Burgess and an agitated Herod Antipas in Peter Hoare.
A few of the minor parts, including the debating Jews, fall victim to Lothar Koenigs's loose-reined conducting but the orchestra relish the freedom, particularly the brass section.
Nick Rieti’s set and Liz Neumuller’s costumes have worn well, though lighting designer André Diot would not have wanted his eclipse of the moon to be as precipitate as it was on the first night. Someone fetch the three-in-one.
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