Coming to a Head

Extramarital affairs are not unique to opera, but they might be more commonplace. Maybe it has to do with spending so much time immersed in opera’s favourite subject: romance. In the studio and in the theatre, in performance and in rehearsal, whether studying an opera all by yourself or staging it with a hundred other people, it’s love, love, love. And a little death.

Most affairs are private or treated with extreme discretion. But there have been some notable exceptions. Wieland Wagner — grandson of Richard Wagner, and a prominent director in his own right — had an especially public one in the 1960s.

Often called the father of Regietheater — the high-concept, director-driven approach to opera — Wieland was a pioneer of spare, psychologically probing productions. You could say that it was a matter of invention coming out of necessity. Most German opera houses were devastated during the Second World War, and the years following were ones of austerity. Short on materials and manpower, directors were unable to create the extravagant, realistic productions of previous decades, so they turned to abstraction. In other words, they focused inward instead of outward, and their productions invited the audience to do likewise. Wieland was the supreme master of the style. To some he was controversial, but he exerted an undeniable influence that is felt even today.

Wieland married Gertrude Reissinger, a noted dancer, in 1941. Over time Gertrude became his primary assistant and choreographer, following him from production to production. Late in life, however, Wieland took up with soprano Anja Silja, who was more than twenty years his junior. Wieland and Gertrude never divorced, even though Wieland and Anja were living together. In fact, Gertrude continued to serve as Wieland’s assistant. On top of this, Wieland and Gertrude’s son, Wolf-Siegfried, would often also help out with productions. Talk about a family affair …

For the 1966–67 season, Wieland had created a new production of Salome for Geneva Opera with Anja cast in the title role. Before travelling to Geneva the two worked privately on staging particulars. I was Geneva’s chief stage director at the time, and I was looking forward to seeing how Wieland would handle iconic moments such as the Dance of the Seven Veils and John the Baptist’s head being served up on a platter.

But just before rehearsals were to start, Wieland died. The production was up in the air — for a split second. Almost immediately Gertrude materialized, claiming that she had inherited all of the productions Wieland had ever created, and that henceforth she possessed the right-of-first-refusal to direct them. The Geneva Salome starring Anja would go on — with Gertrude calling the shots.

When Anja heard about this she refused to show up for the rehearsal period. “I have already worked with the maestro directly,” she announced, referring to Wieland. “I know his intentions better than anyone.” She committed to doing the final dress rehearsal and nothing more. And she made it clear that she would not spend so much as a second in the company of Gertrude Wagner.

Gertrude showed up with Wieland’s production book in hand and started staging — minus her most important principal singer, the very heart of the show. Gloria Davy, a fine American soprano who was fresh from working with Wieland and Gertrude on a new production of Aida in Berlin, gamely stood in for Anja for all of the rehearsals. Day after day I watched the show take shape. It was imaginative and complex. I couldn’t see how Anja, or anyone, could simply step into such a performance without several rehearsals. Fearing a disaster, I went to my boss, Dr. Herbert Graf, and convinced him that Anja at least had to meet with Gertrude, even for just a bit, to make sure that everyone was on the same page. Dr. Graf used all of his powers of persuasion to arrange a meeting — exactly one hour, no more — the day before the dress rehearsal. I was to be present to make sure everything went smoothly. Lucky me.

On the appointed day I escorted Anja to the stage. You could’ve cut the tension with a knife, presuming it had a diamond-tipped blade. Just in terms of appearance the differences between the two — Gertrude looking the part of the frumpy hausfrau and Anja the picture of the long-legged beauty queen — were almost cartoonish. Methodically and icily Gertrude reviewed point after point, with Anja throwing back as much ice as she received. The S.S. Titanic would have been well-advised to steer clear of this meeting. Finally it was over. I mentally wiped my brow. At least it’s done, I thought.

The next day, the dress rehearsal, with a capacity crowd looking on, seemed to be going well enough. In Wieland’s staging there was no literal Dance of the Seven Veils; it was an intriguing touch, though I did miss the theatricality of a conventional staging. According to the score, the execution takes place in a cistern beneath Salome. During a thrilling orchestral crescendo, the platter with the head of John the Baptist covered by a cloth rises from the cistern and into her hands. All of this went off without a hitch. As Anja placed the platter centre stage, I thought happily, We’re almost there. We’re actually going to get through this.

Anja was as fine an actor as a singer, and by this point she was lost in the moment, whirling deliriously around the stage as the orchestra launched into some of the opera’s most erotic passages. Like a striking cobra, Anja snatched at the cloth to reveal the head.

For a split second I thought Anja was making some interesting acting choices. Frozen like a statue, ever-widening eyes fixated on the head, her face contorted into the most convincing look of utter horror that I had ever seen.

But Anja wasn’t acting. After wavering for what seemed like an eternity, she let out a blood-curdling shriek, ran offstage, and promptly vomited. Shaking uncontrollably, she continued on to her dressing room, and that was the last we saw of her for the day.

Anja Silja in Salome, 1968.
Photo by Robert Cahen.

The head on the platter had been designed to look like Wieland.

That was the rumor at least, and it spread quickly. We all recoiled in horror just at the thought. I had to see for myself, and I admit that I approached the platter with more than a little trepidation. You could say there was a resemblance. But was it that much of a resemblance? Had Gertrude done this intentionally as a bit of payback? Or were we all beginning to succumb to the madness of that particular production? All I can tell you is that we all consumed many more cocktails and cigarettes than usual on that day.

Incredibly, despite of all the chaos onstage and backstage, the orchestra never missed a beat. In a feat of concentration, conductor Georges Sébastian and his players turned the end of the opera into an orchestra-only event. In fact, considering Wieland’s reputation for avant-garde, occasionally head-scratching productions, it’s entirely possible that the audience thought that this was a bold, new interpretation.

As it happened, I would have the opportunity to exorcise that particularly weird experience. The same production of Salome was presented in San Francisco two years later, again with Anja, but this time with a different director and a different head. I happened to be in town at the same time, directing a Fra Diavolo that was next on San Francisco Opera’s schedule. Noting that the Salome still omitted the Seven Veils, I decided to indulge in a bit of an inside joke.

There’s a famous scene in Fra Diavolo where two bumbling bandits find themselves hiding in a bedroom closet as the beautiful Zerline prepares to turn in for the night. My Zerline was the gorgeous soprano Mary Costa, who is often called the “Marilyn Monroe of opera.” For this scene I commissioned a special costume consisting of seven petticoats, each a different colour of the rainbow. As the scene unfolded, Mary removed the petticoats one at a time, very much in the manner of … oh, Salome. The bandits, unseen by the audience, watched the whole thing through a spyglass, which protruded from the closet. With each dropped petticoat the spyglass grew an inch or so. By the end of the scene, Zerline was in a nightie and the spyglass had grown to about a foot in length. It was a none-too-subtle joke, done almost entirely for my own amusement — though my bandits giggled like school children through the whole thing, and at least a few people in the audience got it. I’ve often wondered if Wieland would have approved.

By the way, Mary developed laryngitis on opening night. Her cover, Sheila Marks, ended up singing the part from the orchestra pit — in a new English translation by John Gutman, no less — while Mary spoke the dialogue and mimed the role onstage. This is, however, fairly routine in opera. As we told ourselves at the time, “The show must go on … and the petticoats must fall.”