Music

Nazarenes were Jews. Just as Chicagoans are Americans.

Don’t think for a moment that undue prominence is being given so childishly simple a fact.

Every Passion Play I have ever seen has been a negation of this elmentary proposition. And Richard Strauss’s “Salome”, the time and locale of which are the same as the Passion Plays, is equally stupid about the matter.

The point is, that by some weirdly naive wishful thinking, the creators of the Passion Plays (and Strauss. in this case) conceive of Nazarenes-who saw in Jesus the Messiah-as handsome, even heroic figures, but postulate simultaneously that their blood brothers-the other Jews-were evil-looking, indecorous, unseemly, that those who portray them must be equipped with wax noses and burlesque “stage business.”

Thus strauss, the anti-Semite, has dictate an eposode in the curredt production of the Oscar Wilde-Strauss masterpiece which is as vicious in its implications as it is inconceivcable historically.

Aside from this stupidity, th Metropolitan Opera’s production is a glarmorous, fascinating affair. Goeta Ljungerg, in th name role, contributes a suggustively erotic conception of the daughter of Herodias; Max Lorenz is a competent Herod; Dorothee Manski, on th opening night, a convincing Herodias. Artur Bodanzky and the orcherstra did more than their share with th difficultscore.