Metropolitan Opera Archives

Stephanie Sundine, who made her Metropolitan Opera debut on Thursday night in the title role of Richard Strauss's "Salome," is an American soprano who is an archetypal German soprano. In other words, she makes her impact — and a considerable impact it is — more through acting than singing.

This is not to say that she has an inconsequential voice. Her roles include the "Fidelio" Leonore and Isolde, and in smaller theaters her soprano rings out with authority. But it is not beautiful or commanding as such, and on Thursday there was a pronounced unsteadiness around the register break and a persistent pressed tension in her high notes; she hit them, but they did not bloom.

But Ms. Sundine is a fine actress, and she looks the part of Salome better than nearly everyone else around (except possibly Maria Ewing). She even managed to project charismatically in the context of Nikolaus Lehnhoff's production, which in the course of trying to turn biblical Judea into a chichi German Cocktail party makes Salome into a Kewpie doll. That reportedly did not suit Hildegard Behrens earlier this season, and it did not suit the somewhat similarly endowed Ms. Sundine, either.

Yet she rose above it to project a person obsessively possessed with eerie assurance, and even executed the oddly choreographed Dance of the Seven Veils with erotic authority. The audience responded with cheers; too bad this was the opera's final performance of the season.

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