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Salome at the Theater Magdeburg (Photo: Edyata Dufaj)

When Theater Magdeburg staged the first German performance of Gerald Barry’s Alice’s Adventures Underground in 2022, it somewhat unexpectedly staked a claim as a major venue for performances of veteran Irish composer’s works. Now, three years later, the town – some 120 km west of Berlin, where Wagner once worked as chorus master – has cemented that position by presenting the premiere of Barry’s newest opera: his much-anticipated take on Wilde’s Salomé.

And it presents it in grand style, in a sharply focused and bitingly witty production by Julien Chavez – Theater Magdeburg’s intendant since 2021 and a self-confessed Barry nut. He creates a surreally decadent, absurdist world, featuring stylishly trippy costumes (by Severine Besson) that might well have come straight out of one of Alice’s adventures. He and his team – plus a superbly drilled cast – have clearly had a whale of a time diving into the composer’s characteristically anarchic vision of Wilde’s play.

Like his topsy-turvy The Importance of Being Earnest, Barry’s Salome approaches the subject matter from a radically new angle – so radical that any comparison with a certain other famous Salome opera is rendered all but superfluous. Out of Wilde’s words, luxuriating in tantalizing language and imagery, Barry creates his own libretto in English, French and German, into which he throws other additional text from Wilde, Beethoven and elsewhere. Sensuousness, eroticism and exoticism are banished from his score, replaced by stubborn revolving motifs and angular phrases carved out in bald unisons. Sometimes the characters join in; sometimes they exchange snatched phrases over the top.

Salome at the Theater Magdeburg (Photo: Gianmarco Bresadola)

Voices are pushed to their extremes, the delivery bordering on the mechanic. Instead of dancing, Salome takes dictation, tapping away on a typewriter before breaking out into repeated “dee-dee-dees”. Her demand for the “the head” is almost an afterthought, after which matters generally descend into a precipitous, dizzying ride towards an abrupt close. As with Barry’s other recent operas, Salome knows not to overstay its welcome: the whole thing is over in little over an hour, its sheer absurdist energy drawing you completely into its world.

Theater Magdeburg’s cast, brilliantly committed across the board, convey that energy in irresistible fashion. Alison Scherzer is ideal as a brittle, unflinching Salome, while Amy Ní Fhearraigh and Timur are unrelenting in their energy as her royal parents, pushing themselves regularly to their vocal – and dramatic – limits. Vincent Casagrande throws himself with abandon into the role of the Prisoner, a foppish decadent swooping loopily between registers and, in a clever touch, the only character to sing Wilde’s original French. Stefan Sevenich and David Howes present a brilliantly droll double act as the Young Syrian and the Soldier.

Conductor Jérôme Kuhn keeps a necessarily tight rein on the madcap proceedings in the pit; the Magdeburgische Philharmonie plays with terrific discipline and accuracy. An essay in the programme tells us earnestly that this Salome has all sorts of points to make about decadence, creativity, the morality of lust and so on. I’m not sure about all that, but it’s certainly a riot.