Opera review – Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Delila at the Washington National Opera

Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, brought the house down. Just by turning up. At Washington DC’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts she materialised, complete with entourage, just in time for a performance of Saint Saëns’ only regularly performed opera, Samson et Delila.

Good job she made it just before the outbreak-theatre-blackout across the US. To titillate the cognoscenti, MetOpera is currently showing a revival of Mozart’s little known Covìd fan tutte online, on demand.

Her stalls side-door entrance, timed perfectly to attract max attention as the house quieted for the conductor’s arrival at the podium, had the audience on its feet, clapping, hallooing and bravoing. In the dim auditorium, the path to her seat was lit by the flashing strobes of mobile phones, capturing the selfie moment.

Later, Samson failed to bring the house down. More about that floperoo in due course. Let’s stick with the Ginsberg performance for a bit. It was calculated. It was a phenomenon. It was more dramatic than the opera. The idea of a senior judge even being recognised in London, let alone cheered into the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, seems weird.

But in America, where all politicians are now despised by one faction or another, the 86-year-old Supreme Court Justice has been elevated to status of darling national treasure, a sane log to cling to, as the state drifts and other public reputations sink below the waves. Yes, she is billed as “progressive” – red flag to red-faced Trumpies – but no-one dares besmirch her hard-won reputation for moral rectitude – even in the Twitter-sphere.

US election stock take. Trump – ignoramus. Biden – past it. Sanders – foaming, foundering socialist. In this race of the gerontocracy in which the 73-year-old President now represents the youth vote, it is ironical that the cunning 86-year-old pioneering chat-show judge is beating them all in national popularity stakes. Justice Ginsberg has learned to milk the adulation, which may undermine her perceived independence in the long term. Currently she has a half hour “special” programme running on the MetOpera/Sirius radio channel.

“My passion for opera began in 1944,” Ginsburg tells SiriusXM host, Julie James.  “I was 11 and my aunt, who taught English in a middle school in Brooklyn, New York, took me to a high school where there was an abbreviated performance of La Gioconda … I was just blown away by it. I’d never heard such glorious music.”

So far, so innocuous. She increasingly enjoys coasting the airwaves and will surely stray into real controversy someday soon; if not of her own making, contrived by critics circling to trip her up. I’m a Supreme Court Judge, Get Me Out of Here, coming up next.

Indulging her innocuous passion, Justice Ginsberg had trod the boards to see Camille Saint-Saëns’ only popular opera, Samson et Delila at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Shamefully, I was visiting the center for the first time. Although a regular visitor to the capital, I have until now dodged the Edward Durrell Stone designed monstrosity. It lurks, a featureless, rectangular lump of unimaginative white concrete, brooding over a bend of the Potomac River, spoiling an otherwise superb view.

As the United States National Cultural Center, surely there must be a hoard of redeeming, thought-provoking treasures inside? Shame on me for shunning for so long. Nope. An iconic, craggy bronze bust of JFK by Robert Berks apart, the building is an unimaginative assemblage of long, empty corridors and deserted spaces, dotted with random, mostly abandoned, tables and chairs. It boasts a shoddy café and a – mostly closed – terrace restaurant. The vaunted Hall of Nations turned out to be only a collection of droopy flags. A pop-up exhibit of local art had been carelessly flung together in the entrance hall.

The 2,300 seat opera auditorium feels compact, kitted out in faux red velour and is unsurprising. Acoustics were OK, but I yearned for some hard surfaces to sharpen the sound. There are knock-off chandeliers in the ceiling, pathetically aping the New York Metropolitan Opera’s hallmark ascending and descending Hans Harald Rath crystal wonders. In DC they stay put.

Oh, yes, the opera. Firstly, bad news for smug Swedes everywhere. You did not invent IKEA. The Philistines got there 2000 years ago. Set designer, Connecticut based Erhard Rom, had populated the biblical stage set with cutting edge samples of their work to prove it. Rakor geometric room dividers framed the action; a massive Kallax range bookcase-wall was pushed on, stage left, shelves stacked with dancing girls; Delila seduced Samson on a huge Songesand king size, with discreet white, diaphanous Grusblad canopy and bedspread.

Dagon, the Philistine’s fish God, was, sadly, not a fish/man as history demands. He was the largest of IKEA’s inscrutable Tonad range of primitive sculpture; your friendly, Dagon-God hanging sculpture, which pivots at the first sign of temple shaking. Fridge magnets next.

The overall impression was cheapskate and incongruous. The couple sitting next to me – regulars – bemoaned the fate of excellent period sets from a previous production, inexplicably junked. The costumes, however, had been kept. Apart from the uniform desert brown clobber making it difficult to distinguish between Philistines and Israelites during smiting bouts, the feel was authentic. Often producers go OTT with Philistine regalia, especially intimidating, towering headgear. See the Met’s 2018 production for overkill. Philistines as the Flower Pot Men.

I am not a great fan of Samson et Delila. I’m not even sure Saint-Saëns was. The plot is haphazard, leaving out the exciting bits of the Samson legend, asses’ jawbones, regular smitings, 30-day travel bans on Philistines; all essential parts of the backstory. Even the iconic cutting of Samson’s hair takes place out of sight, offstage, behind the Grusblad drapery.

The moment of highest drama in the whole saga – when Delila seduces the revelation of the secret of his strength out of him on the Songesand bed – is simply skipped. It is represented by shadow-play behind the drapes. I think Delila used a small kitchen knife picked up absentmindedly from a bowl of grapes. That would be from the Fördubbla range.

Dog’s breakfast. Saint-Saëns wrote the opera piecemeal, starting with Act II. The original plan was to present the work in oratorio form, as the French authorities still banned the presentation of works with religious themes onstage in the late 1870s. Funny sort of arty, bohemian liberals, the French. They lifted a-200-year-old ban on women wearing trousers in public only as recently as 2013. Marlene Dietrich controversially flouted it, in flagrante, in 1932, starting a craze.

Saint-Saëns’ librettist, Ferdinand Lemaire, persuaded, him against his better judgement, the theme deserved operatic treatment – and Samson et Delila is Saint-Saëns’ only regularly performed surviving operatic work. The plot does not flow naturally. It is easy to conclude the composer’s heart wasn’t in the story – just the music.

Later, the Act I introduction was written and bolted on. It contains the first pivotal plot event, the killing of the High Priest of Dagon. This sparks the revolt of the Israelites, led by Samson. The contemporary view was that focusing on the Delila love motif as the central theme of the opera in Act II might rescue the work from the censor’s pen. Hence the contrived structure.

Delila has two famous arias, Printemps commence and Mon coueur s’ouvre à ta voix – a cynical, betrayal aria. And that’s it for memorable music, apart from a gratuitous, but mandatory for the time, Bacchanal dance sequence, in which the strength of the IKEA supporting furniture was tested to its limits.

In fact, one prop item – authorship denied by IKEA – was tested beyond its limits. A heavy necklace worn by one of the dancers snapped, showering large, round, coloured beads noisily across the stage. Clunk, clunk, clunk. Amidst alarmed looks from performers and titters from the audience, a distracted Delila stepped on one. This was the most interesting thing she did all evening.

J’Nai Bridges, the US mezzo soprano who portrayed Delila, had a strange voice that almost disappeared at the bottom of her range. She looked the part but could not sing it. No projection. She was the weakest of a, frankly, unexceptional cast.

The chorus under the direction of Steven Gathman was excellent, but badly directed. Peter Kazaras, the New York stage director, often placed them singing in static line. That is, when they were not negotiating the hazards of the rickety IKEA bookcase.

Veteran conductor John Fiore attracts headlines like, John Fiore Ruins Another One. Whew! He did an excellent job in DC and brought sensitive tone and vivid colour from the Washington National Opera Orchestra.

I hope Justice Ginsberg travels beyond Washington – bans on movement permitting – to indulge her passion for opera. I wonder what she thought of the final scene – always difficult to stage. Samson recovers his strength and brings the temple down. The Met’s current production replaces the temple with a towering, split figure of Dagon which bursts into white light using sparkly fireworks. Very unsatisfactory.

What would Washington National do? As his budget did not run to IKEA’s Home Temple line, Mr. Rom cunningly hid most of the action, or lack of it, behind a semi-transparent curtain, on which projected fire flickered and brimstone brimmed. Samson writhed. Something shook. Philistines fell off the bookcase. A hook securing Dagon to the wall came loose and he swung crazily. A lopsided end to a lopsided production.