It’s been almost 30 years since Atom Egoyan’s vision of Salome debuted at the Canadian Opera Company (COC), and while that is but a blip in opera time, 30 years is a long time by the metrics of this burgeoning multimedia approach to reimagining the operatic canon. Speak to most members of the emerging generation of opera directors and they’d be happy to tell you how mixing video and projections into an otherwise static mise-en-scène is soooo mid 2000’s. I concur. The trend of interlacing the on-stage action with contrasting (read: distracting) material pasted upon an antiquated plot had its peak about a decade ago, thanks in part to visionaries like Egoyan. These days, jaded as we are by all manners of screens large and small, the milieu is trending back towards what has always made opera work: damn good singing served on the platter of a cohesive directorial vision. I’ll get to the singing shortly, but Egoyan’s vision of a cerebral Salome under contemporary scrutiny is the rising tide that lifts every boat on stage. It seems the energy and attention that otherwise should have gone into revitalizing the slightly dated video projections that appear intermittently throughout the production, went towards a psychological investigation of the titular character’s traumatic childhood. Despite the yesteryear-hued cinematography, this production is a masterclass in how to comprehensively and artfully interrogate the often fatal demise of opera’s femme fatales.