EWING FASCINATES IN TITLE ROLE : MUSIC CENTER STAGES A DAZZLING ‘SALOME’

The Germans have a wonderful, irreverent word: Theaterviech .

Literally, it means theater-beast . But it means more, and it isn’t pejorative.

It describes someone who walks out on a stage and exerts instant magnetism, someone who takes chances, someone who holds nothing back, someone who can fascinate an audience while reading the phone book or staring blankly straight ahead.

A Theaterviech doesn’t have to be a technical paragon. A Theaterviech simply has to have guts, instincts, brains and charisma. Being one involves temperament, a state of mind and, yes, a state of body. The qualities can’t be taught.

Maria Ewing, who ventured the title role in Richard Strauss’ “Salome” for the new Music Center Opera on Thursday night, is a Theaterviech . She is, in fact, a prime and wondrous example of the rare breed.

She is a lovely, frail, seemingly nervous young woman blessed with a devastating pout, hypnotic eyes and a seering mind. She also happens to command a rather soft, slender and reedy mezzo-soprano that thins out a bit at the extended top.

Everything about her persona hints at an ideal embodiment of Richard Strauss’ elusive heroine. Virtually nothing about her vocal endowments would seem to predestine her for this cruel, daunting challenge.

Strauss, of course, asked the impossible. In his setting of Oscar Wilde’s shocking ode to awakening sexual obsession and tragic emotional compulsion, he asked for a 16-year-old Oriental virgin who happens to be a princess yet moves like a dancer and sings like an Isolde.

No one would claim that Ewing can sing like an Isolde. Even with a conductor more considerate than Henry Lewis happened to be on this occasion, she might find the challenge a strain. She cannot easily cut through the massive orchestra in moments of agitation. She cannot soar triumphantly over the exultant cacophony of the orgasmic finale.

But, in context, it hardly matters. She gives everything she has, and then some. She phrases thoughtfully, expressively. She colors the text knowingly. She sustains tension in the grand lines, paces herself cannily in the violent outbursts.

She conveys a degree of youthful dignity even at the height of apparent debauchery, reinforces an aura of calm innocence while trapped in a world blaring with decadence. She treads lightly and achieves everything through insinuation. Well, almost everything.

In the notorious Dance of the Seven Dresses (there are few veils in the Music Center’s Judea), she gracefully executes choreography by Elizabeth Keen that tries to juxtapose mutually exclusive styles. At the outset, she follows Strauss’ instructions, conveying sensuality primarily with her hands and eyes. As the striptease continues, however, she succumbs to a few hootchy-kootchy routines. Still, after the frenzied climax, she actually exerts pride and purity as she stands nude, except for a golden G-string, before the lecherous Herod.

Peter Hemmings and the Music Center Opera managed to build a splendid “Salome” around their seemingly unlikely, ultimately triumphant protagonist.

Sir Peter Hall--a thinking-man’s director--staged the proceedings with cool clarity, subtle motivation and pervasive style. He impeccably followed Strauss’ instructions regarding the symbolic vicissitudes of the moon. He also lent frightening credibility to the moments that usually turn out to be most awkward: Guards dragged the potentially sympathetic Jokanaan away on a leash when Narraboth committed suicide; the severed head of the Baptist didn’t look like a plum pudding, for once; and at last the killing of Salome made sense.

John Bury provided an exquisite, gauzy, flexible set that somehow fused the delicacy of ancient Persian miniatures with the over-ripe indulgence of Jugendstil with the illustrative wit of Aubrey Beardsley.

Lewis may not always have spared the decibels for his fragile heroine, but he conducted with splendid sweep and urgency, with cumulative impact and, where appropriate, frenzy. He also elicited brilliant playing from the expanded Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in the pit.

Although any “Salome” rises or falls with its Salome, this production was sensitively cast throughout.

Michael Devlin as Jokanaan, wearing nothing but a decidedly immodest loincloth, looked exactly as Salome describes him: like a gaunt ivory statue. Although he does not happen to possess the high-ranging Heldenbariton prescribed by the composer, he sang with fine, ringing intensity and acted with just the right suggestion of crazed self-righteousness. His only problem turned out to be acoustical: When consigned to the cistern, his voice was distorted grotesquely by microphones. Modern technology be damned.

Ragnar Ulfung, the Herod par excellence of our day, once again conveyed the bluster of the Tetrarch with point and heroic ardor. Marvellee Cariaga played Herodias as an awesome, dissolute battle-ax. Now more soprano than mezzo, she sounded rather hollow in the lower phrases, brilliant at the top.

The supporting cast, which might have benefited from a good German coach, included Jonathan Mack as a mellifluous, golden-locked Narraboth, Stephanie Vlahos as a weak-voiced Page, Julien Robbins as a sturdy First Nazarene, Michael Gallup as a sonorous First Soldier.

This is what Music Center Opera should be all about. This is what opera should be all about.