There are doubtless many for whom the thought of Jane Eaglen in the title role of Strauss's Salome is unappealing. Once touted as one of the finest British dramatic sopranos, Eaglen has, of late, delivered a sequence of questionable performances that marked the start of a seeming decline in her powers: indifferent Wagner recordings for Daniel Barenboim; English National Opera's sub-standard revival of Spontini's La Vestale; and, most recently, an embarrassing Barbican recital that begged questions about whether she had lost the plot altogether.
Her first Salome, in concert with the London Symphony Orchestra under Richard Hickox, marked a return to something like form. Its success may partly be ascribed to the fact that Strauss's vocal writing rarely allows Eaglen to do what she now does worst: sing softly in her middle registers where you are aware of a pulse in her voice. More importantly, however, her performance was characterised by a level of imaginative and dramatic commitment that she has not revealed for some time.
Not being a natural for displays of girlish sexuality, Eaglen avoids them. She is predatory and imperious from the start, ordering the soldiers about with contemptuous hauteur, then not so much attempting to seduce Jokanaan as vocally trying to batter him into submission. Later we hear selfish naivety transformed into frustrated rage as she demands his severed head. The final scene is thrilling in its power, her voice cutting like a scythe through the orchestral barrage that Hickox unleashes beneath her.
Elsewhere, however, Hickox is a less than ideal interpreter, not always integrating his fondness for lingering over individual points of sonority with the dramatic flow of the score. We are too conscious of fits and starts, of the work being broken down into sections.
The LSO's playing is virtuosically precise rather than sumptuously erotic, while the rest of the cast proves variable. Peter Bronder is a wonderful Herod, a real slimeball, at once funny and sinister, vocally more refined than many and avoiding the usual tendency to bark rather than sing. Andrea Baker is a fiery Herodias, though Matthew Best manages to turn Jokanaan into a prissy bore, so uninteresting that you wonder just what it is about the man that turns Salome on in the first place.
