Salome (opera)
| Salome | |
|---|---|
| Opera by Richard Strauss | |
1910 poster by Ludwig Hohlwein
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| Language | German |
| Based on | Play by Oscar Wilde |
| Premiere | 9 December 1905 Semperoper, Dresden |
Salome, Op. 54, is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by the composer, based on Hedwig Lachmann's German translation of the French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde. Strauss dedicated the opera to his friend Sir Edgar Speyer.
The opera is famous (at the time of its premiere, infamous) for its "Dance of the Seven Veils". The final scene is frequently heard as a concert-piece for dramatic sopranos.
Oscar Wilde originally wrote his Salomé in French. Strauss saw the play in Lachmann's version and immediately set to work on an opera. The play's formal structure was well-suited to musical adaptation. Wilde himself described Salomé as containing "refrains whose recurring motifs make it so like a piece of music and bind it together as a ballad".
Strauss composed the opera to a German libretto, and that is the version that has become widely known. In 1907, Strauss made an alternate version in French (the language of the original Oscar Wilde play), which was used by Mary Garden, the world's most famous proponent of the role, when she sang the opera in New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, Paris, and other cities. Marjorie Lawrence sang the role both in French (for Paris) and in German (for the Metropolitan Opera, New York) in the 1930s. The French version is much less well known today, although it was revived in Lyon in 1990, and recorded by Kent Nagano with Karen Huffstodt in the title role and José van Dam as Jochanaan. In 2011, the French version was staged by Liège Opera, starring June Anderson.
The combination of the Christian biblical theme, the erotic and the murderous, which so attracted Wilde to the tale, shocked opera audiences from its first appearance. Some of the original performers were very reluctant to handle the material as written and the Salome, Marie Wittich, "refused to perform the 'Dance of the Seven Veils'", thus creating a situation where a dancer stood in for her. This precedent has been largely followed, one early notable exception being that of Aino Ackté, whom Strauss himself dubbed "the one and only Salome".
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