Blindfolded, stick a pin in the map of the good ol’ USA. When you find you have hit Indianola, Iowa, stop Whistling Dixie, bone up on The Iowa Fight Song, – “The word is, Fight! Fight! Fight! for IOWA,” – instead. Then, head Midwest. 

Clearly the boondocks of opera. Hang on, isn’t Central City Opera, Colorado, without a hint of irony, showing Puccini’s La fanciulla del West?  More boondocky yet. That would be the tiny town which boasts The Face on the Barroom floor in the Teller Bar, next to the opera house. The attractions of Central City never fail to amaze. 

It was painted by artist, Herndon Davis, when the bar was being revamped in 1936. No makeovers since. Apparently, the chestnut-haired beauty, Madeline, drove him mad. So, he painted her portrait on the floor and the wee soul has become part of the Central City tourist iconography. 

If Central City offers opera, hardly a surprise that Des Moines Metro Opera can boast a whole summer festival featuring four main stage performances – Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, Debussy’s atmospheric Pelléas et Mélisande, American Apollo, a specially commissioned world premiere composed by Damien Geter and, the object of my attention, Richard Strauss’ Salome. Not a bad line-up.

I had voyaged inconveniently from New York via Minneapolis with a purpose. Regular readers will know that I weigh the contributions of directors as carefully as that of performers when considering the quality of a production. A prospect beckoned. A face on an opera house programme.

My inbox had bonged a few weeks earlier. Opera Wire, an excellent opera chat shop, told me that Nathan Troup, director of Des Moines’ Strauss’ Salome had left and assistant director, Alison Pogorelc had jumped into the breach. Two weeks into rehearsals. Mission impossible. Or, was it?

Transparency time. Pogorelc is a New York friend. I was not surprised she had picked up the directing gauntlet thrown down by Troup’s departure. Keen as mustard. Others would have deemed it a poisoned chalice.

She is establishing a career packed with potential. As assistant director of the New York Met’s recent, fabulous La Rondine (Puccini, she was instrumental in delivering what in Glasgow is known as a “brammer”.

In the summer, the up-and-coming opera generation of Manhattan moves from the cities to America’s burgeoning festival scene. Taking on the direction of Strauss’ cataclysmic Salome mid-rehearsal would be in an entirely different league from the light-hearted La Rondine.

Directing can be brutal, especially when the ship needs to be righted. Grungy singers who know better, a production design already set in stone, the need for a young director to assert a point of view and carry the cast.

In the fast-moving world of music, there sometimes comes that career-changing moment when artists – directors and the production team are as much artists as singers, musicians, and conductors – have to step up unexpectedly to the plate. Sheep and goats are instantly tested and separated. 

I’m currently in Jackson Hole, Wyoming (another story) and was reminded by the Associate Conductor of the Grand Teton Music Festival, Benjamin Manis, only last night of the Leonard Bernstein legend. 

Assistant conductor at the New York Philharmonic in November 1943, 25-year-old Lennie had to take over at zilch notice from a sick Bruno Walter. Without even a rehearsal, Bernstein scored a home run and blazed into national prominence.

Indianola is not Carnegie Hall, but the principle is the same. Alison Pogorelc took up the challenge and made Salome her own. Just as Bernstein flashed into the opening chords of Schumann’s Manfred Overture, winning over a sceptical audience groaning at being deprived of Walter so many years ago, she took Salome by the scruff of the neck and made it her own.

This would be a tale of marginal interest save for the point that, with Pogorelc’s sharp eye, characters in this notoriously difficult work were portrayed and their actions better shaped to the music than I have ever seen. Her directing was decisive producing a stunning success.

I am fascinated by Strauss’ Salome. The work marks a turning point in dramatic opera. All Strauss’ characters, even relatively minor ones, matter. The music makes it so. Often that is ignored by directors who think their own insights beat Strauss’ score. They never do.

Two instances where Pogorelc changed the game. A relatively minor character, Narraboth, is a soldier infatuated with Salome, way above his station. In ACT I, she leads him on, if he will do her bidding. “I may smile at you from my carriage”. That bidding is to bring her the captive prophet, Jochanaan from his dungeon.

When he delivers, Salome’s true preoccupation with the lank-haired prophet, in a passionate aria, makes it clear to Narraboth that he has been conned. He commits grisly suicide. In most productions, he simply stabs himself, tout court. 

If skated over, a lost dramatic opportunity. Pogorelc took Narraboth on a journey of touching self-awareness. She positioned him backstage right, alongside one of the handmaidens, in love with him, of course. 

Salome’s words aimed at Jochanaan struck Narraboth like a sequence of fatal darts. In the background, but still clearly visible, he ascended a staircase, crumpling with each step he took. Until he was left curled into a foetal position in despair, his handmaiden love stretching up to him in vain.

Only then, once the audience understood the depths of his anguish, did he end it all. Instead of being just a daft soldier with aspirations above his station, he became a tragic figure. Emblematic of the dangers of attracting Salome’s attentions. A precursor of what Jochanaan might expect once her seven veils were shed.

Then there is the troublesome ending. Herod, who has lusted after his stepdaughter throughout, suddenly instructs that Salome be done away with. Usually, without a lead-in. But this is no whim. He is acting on a slowly rising tide of horror. The dawning realisation that Salome is a monster. Portraying his changing mindset is critical to that, oh so dramatic, denouement. 

The recent Paris Lydia Steller production of Salome, reviewed in Reaction, was marred at the climax when she had Herod suddenly turn and, without any prelude, instruct his guards, “Kill that woman”. Why? The music dictates that Herod take time to change his mind about his vampiric stepdaughter.

In Des Moines, as the tension rose in the final scene, Pogorelc’s Herod slowly mounted the steps, his treads in time with the score, reflecting carefully, until, on a frightening, clashing chord, with a dramatic gesture he turned and barked out his order. Herod’s crucial mood change had the audience completely convinced. 

Strauss changes key from F# Major to a shocking D# Minor to mark the moment. A clarion five-note rising trumpet call rings out, repeated, then on to the final four hammer blow chords that end the work. Job done.

The Blank Performing Center in Indianola, on Simpson College campus, featured a stage like no other I have seen. In the round, the orchestra pit completely hidden in a substage structure. Sound rose from amid the action. A Bayreuth design of substage orchestra on steroids. 

Maestro David Neely, clearly familiar with the bizarre layout, never missed a beat, the singers able to follow him on a well-concealed screen above the stage front exit. The sound world enveloping the audience was wonderful. 

Sitting in the front row, this was an immersive experience. Jochanaan rose white-clad from his cell and Salome serenaded him an arm’s length away. Just as well that bass, Norman Garrett, was one of the most compelling Jochanaan’s I have encountered. Thirty minutes in, he and I were almost on nodding terms. Then they chopped his head off – and that was that.

Salome was soprano Sara Gartland, a Des Moines regular, who tantalised and terrified. No innocent – a mistake many current productions make – she dominated the agenda, forcing Herod to bend to her will through strength of character as much as seductive powers. 

Anyway, there was an Intimacy Coordinator to snuff out much of that. This was a performance capable of standing its ground on any world stage. They were two of an exceptional cast.

In 2025, Des Moines will offer Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress and Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. Three tempting reasons to return to the opera house with the orchestral hole in the ground and sky-high standards.

Whither Director, Alison Pogorelc? Among work for New York’s The Why Collective, it’s back to the Met, assisting on Rigoletto, Moby Dick and Le nozze de Figaro. Meantime, soprano sister, Emily will sing Musetta in this season’s La bohème and Pamina in The Magic Flute. Pogorelcs on manoeuvres. New York, you have been warned. 

And Another Thing

If actor, presenter and Big Brother House contender Christopher Biggins is savvy, when he interviews Dr Harry Brunjes and his wife, Jacquie in his The Doc & The Dancer show at The Fringe at Prestonfield he will make sure a piano is on hand.

Because when Harry and Jacquie were welcome guests – they are regulars – at New York’s Metropolitan Opera Club, after my “fireside chat”, Harry and Jacquie wowed the diners with their own version of London Town. Some of the shameful lyrics referred to yours truly. Unflatteringly! Outrageous!

Harry and Jacquie met on stage in a Summer Show, Newquay in … (Oi! Have a bit of discretion. – ed.) some time ago. The couple went on to huge success. Amongst other things, Harry is now Chair of English National Opera and Jacquie of All England Dance. 

They may have ascended the heights, but they have never forgotten their roots. Which is why the story they will tell onstage is so compelling.

Catch them on 23 August at 4:30pm, Prestonfield House, being lightly grilled by Lukewarm, one of the regular characters in the famous Ronnie Barker Porridge series. A.k.a. Christopher Biggins. 

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