"That girl had very strong thoughts of sex, but I'm just sexless, I guess."
So, last week, in self-deprecation, spoke the sexiest Salome since red-haired Ljuba Welitch. The occasion was a new production of the Strauss opera at Spoleto, Italy, the musical festival that draws some 120,-ooo tourists each summer. Singing the role of "that girl"—described in Oscar Wilde's play as having "veins filled with fire"—was a fine new Negro soprano: Virginia-born Margaret Tynes.
When Strauss's shocker, with its violent, passionate score and its scenes of perverted eroticism, first burst on the public consciousness in 1905, it scared the censors out of their frock coats and orchestras half out of their pits. The one-act opera was banned in Berlin, Vienna, London and New York. Even Soprano Marie Wittich, who appeared in the title role at the world premiere in Dresden, threatened for a time to withdraw because "I am a decent woman."
Cannibalistic Sex Kitten. As portrayed by Soprano Tynes, Strauss's 16-year-old heroine seemed not so much indecent as psychopathic—a kind of cannibalistic sex kitten. Moving about the stage with catlike grace, her rich, ringing voice zooming with ease through the high, precarious lines, Tynes was by turns willful, vindictive, enraged. Dressed in a gold leotard, she moved with such sinuous authority through the notorious Dance of the Seven Veils (which most sopranos manage to make about as seductive as a mazurka) that some critics could not decide whether she was more gifted as singer or dancer. And in her final scene, in which she kissed and fondled the lips of John the Baptist's severed head while murmuring "I have kissed your mouth, Jokanaan. Perhaps it was the taste of love," she evoked with authority the mood of mingled horror, fascination and fear that Strauss was after.
Tynes's fine performance got strong backing from other American singers, particularly Mezzo-Soprano Lili Chookasian, 35, a voice teacher from Northwestern University, and Negro Tenor George Shirley, 27. Conductor Thomas Schippers handled Strauss's surging score with such brilliant control that he might even have satisfied the composer's father, who muttered when he heard Salome: "0 God, what nervous music! It is exactly as if one had one's trousers full of May bugs."
On Her Knees. Soprano Tynes, 29, flew to New York last spring from Milan, where she was studying voice, to audition for Schippers. After listening to her and looking at her small, shapely figure ("Rarely." wrote an Italian critic, "have we seen a physique so perfectly adapted to the role"), Schippers announced: "This is Salome." The daughter of a clergyman, Tynes studied at Juilliard, sang with the New York City Opera and on television before settling in Italy. For a while, the idea of playing Salome disturbed her. Even after the opening night performance, she knelt down in her dressing room and prayed for five minutes, "explaining to the Lord that I didn't really want to make love to John the Baptist's head. It was just part of the opera."