Salome (tonight and Sunday at Taipei's National Theater) may turn out not be quite the experience traditionalists will be expecting. Instead, it turns out to be a form of "deconstruction" of Strauss' opera, while musically vigorous in the best traditional manner.
The set will indeed show a palace in which a decadent Herod and his debauched wife Herodias drunkenly cavort.
But rather than luxury decayed into dilapidation, it all resembles a palace that the builders never
completed.
As for the ending, something like the opposite of what those who know the work as Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss wrote it should be expected.
At rehearsals this week Felix Chen conducted his Taipei Symphony Orchestra like a man inspired.
This is one in a long line of magnificent concerts and opera productions Chen, a veritable Taiwanese "living national treasure" has given to Taipei City.
Inga Fischer (Salome) possesses a magnificent voice that it's hard to believe is issuing from the slight frame that makes her so appropriately girlish for the role. Peter Weber (the Baptist) is a tower of strength, physically and vocally. Hans-Dietr Bader makes a snarlingly harsh Herod, with a voice that penetrates to every corner of the theater.
He is matched at every point by Leandra Overmann, marvelously over-the-top as a voluptuous, pleasure-loving Herodias.
Backstage, Overmann related with relish how she was mistaken for soprano Montserrat Caballe at Chiang Kai-shek airport by a senior immigration official after a junior one had failed to find Yugoslavia (the country of her passport) on any list.
Currently tickets are available at N$1,200 for Friday's and NT$1,000 and NT$1,200 for Sunday's performance.
June 9 to June 15 A photo of two men riding trendy high-wheel Penny-Farthing bicycles past a Qing Dynasty gate aptly captures the essence of Taipei in 1897 — a newly colonized city on the cusp of great change. The Japanese began making significant modifications to the cityscape in 1899, tearing down Qing-era structures, widening boulevards and installing Western-style infrastructure and buildings. The photographer, Minosuke Imamura, only spent a year in Taiwan as a cartographer for the governor-general’s office, but he left behind a treasure trove of 130 images showing life at the onset of Japanese rule, spanning July 1897 to
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
At Computex 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) urged the government to subsidize AI. “All schools in Taiwan must integrate AI into their curricula,” he declared. A few months earlier, he said, “If I were a student today, I’d immediately start using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini Pro and Grok to learn, write and accelerate my thinking.” Huang sees the AI-bullet train leaving the station. And as one of its drivers, he’s worried about youth not getting on board — bad for their careers, and bad for his workforce. As a semiconductor supply-chain powerhouse and AI hub wannabe, Taiwan is seeing
In an interview posted online by United Daily News (UDN) on May 26, current Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) was asked about Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) replacing him as party chair. Though not yet officially running, by the customs of Taiwan politics, Lu has been signalling she is both running for party chair and to be the party’s 2028 presidential candidate. She told an international media outlet that she was considering a run. She also gave a speech in Keelung on national priorities and foreign affairs. For details, see the May 23 edition of this column,
RSS