Patricia Racette and Egils Silins sing with James Conlon conducting the CSO in Strauss’s “Salome”

Making his Ravinia debut as John the Baptist, Latvian bass-baritone Egils Silins offered a potent mixture of visceral disgust at Herod’s lewd court and ringing confidence in his own holy, prophetic mission. His dark, resonant voice was also flexible, recoiling and attacking like a giant, angry serpent.