Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- By the time her stepfather Herodes starts sucking Salome's naked breasts, it is clear that nothing will save William Friedkin's Munich staging of the 1905 Richard Strauss opera about the petulant veiled princess.

Director Friedkin, better known in cinema circles (``The Exorcist,'' ``12 Angry Men'') than in the opera world, piled on obscenity and indecency to depressing effect in his production of ``Salome.'' Friedkin's second-ever opera staging read like a dreary catalog of beginner's errors, the most blatant being the assumption that nudity on the opera stage is the same thing as eroticism.

This was a big event for the Bavarian State Opera. ``Salome'' formed the second half of a double bill, preceded by the world premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's ``Das Gehege'' (``The Enclosure''). Yet even the birth of a brand new opera by a doyen of German composition took second place to the real event: Kent Nagano's arrival at the helm of the Bavarian State Opera.

The Californian star conductor, whose trademarks are a flick of his well-conditioned mane of hair and a gift for glassily transparent orchestral sound, succeeds Zubin Mehta and his clever offsider, Peter Jonas. He has a lot to live up to. Mehta produced plush Wagnerian sounds from the orchestra, while Jonas packed houses with slick productions. Nagano has chosen to fly the flag of hip modernity, and this was his mission statement. It is a pity that his team could think of nothing newer than nudity.

Looming Horror

In fact, ``Das Gehege'' is not a bad piece. At just over 30 minutes, it is the perfect length for a contemporary opera. Rihm has set a scene from German intellectual Botho Strauss's 1991 play ``Final Chorus,'' a deconstructive work about the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The scene is a hysterical monologue for a frustrated woman who frees an eagle in order to kill it. Strauss had the German heraldic bird in mind, but Rihm's setting opens it to wider associations. Both text and score enter erotic and psychological territory. This could be the perfect companion piece to Schoenberg's ``Erwartung'' or Sciarrino's ``Lohengrin.'' There is a constant sense of underlying horror.

Rihm has woven a complex, beautiful score, firmly rooted in German tradition, full of allusions and onomatopoeic effects. You hear flapping wings, shrill bird calls, pounding heartbeats, the memory of a dance. Gabriele Schnaut sings the work's single role with violent dramatic commitment. The results are loud and not at all seductive.

Hans Schavernoch's single monumental set of refrigerator- white arches serves both productions. Petra Reinhardt dresses Schnaut like a governess with a side job in lingerie, and an actor playing the eagle in a silent role wears a Halloween bird suit. Friedkin lets Schnaut sing most of the part perched near the front of the stage, staring at Nagano.

Popular though it has become to hire film directors for the opera stage, enough failed experiments have proved that the two genres have little in common. Singers stand rigid and helpless in the footlights, falling back on a narrow repertoire of stock gestures, and age-old cliches are unwittingly regurgitated.

This was nowhere more apparent than in Friedkin's inept and ugly ``Salome'' production. This time, Reinhardt's costumes blended Nativity play with cheap fashion catalogue, and Friedkin let the singers stare so fixedly at Nagano that they seemed to fear he might disappear if they looked anywhere else for longer than three seconds. Wilde's tale of the disturbed, spoiled princess and her fatal demand for the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter was presented like a college musical.

Lifting Veils

Unable to create any plausible erotic tension between Alan Titus's musty, uncharismatic Jochanaan and Angela Denoke's neurotic Salome, Friedkin had his soprano simply strip. She danced her own Dance of the Seven Veils, just as embarrassingly as any less slender and lissome singer might have done, and then let Herodes (sung like a Disney caricature by Wolfgang Schmidt) tear off her top and lick her nipples.

Denoke overacts as if her life depends on it, and after a certain point it's impossible to watch. Listening is also hard. The role is too big for her, and the strain tells as the evening wears on. She swoops up to her high notes and hoots when the going gets tough. The range of expressive color is narrow, and the basic sound is unlovely.

Nagano conducts ``Salome'' as though it were ``Der Rosenkavalier,'' all delicacy and sweet clarity. That has a charm of its own, though it isn't enough to give this work the garish, twisted horror it needs. Nagano generates tension through a sense of inexorable forward motion, yet studiously eschews the grotesque. It is hard to get excited about what he does, though the opening-night audience gave all participants warm applause.

``Das Gehege''/``Salome'' plays tonight and Nov. 3 and 5 at the Bavarian State Opera, Munich.

(Shirley Apthorp is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this story: Shirley Apthorp at sarabande@compuserve.com.

Last Updated: October 30, 2006 10:59 EST