You probably know the story of Salome and John the Baptist, and probably have seen some of the very many illustrations it inspired. There are multiple versions of the story, most (but not all) portraying Salome as a wicked seductress – as does this opera. (Rita Hayworth, of course, challenged that interpretation - watch her dance here.) Worthy of discussion, some more historically minded writers (example here ) see this young, confused teenager, and even her mother Herodias, as female victims of male power and lust.
Recent productions have rethought the character – and thereby the messages of the opera. Vic Opera introduced its Covid-fated 2020 production: ‘Strauss’ opera combines a biblical tale with sexual awakening, eroticism and murder, exploring the nature of desire and outer limits of human behaviour.’
Alex Ross concludes ‘Whether Salome lives or dies, she has shattered her stepfather’s corrupt and hypocritical regime. As an angel of destruction, she is worthy of respect.’
But Strauss didn’t write a new version of the Biblical story – Oscar Wilde did it for him, and he used the Wilde play untouched as a libretto.
Strauss’ First Scandal
This was Strauss’s first opera success – and it had a bumpy arrival. Premiered in Dresden, 1905, to some shock and horror, it nevertheless had been performed in 50 opera houses by 1907. But then it hit Anglo Saxon sensitivity. In 1907, London won a modified performance; previously it had been banned by the Lord Chamberlain’s office. ‘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.’
In New York the Met production was banned after one rehearsal, on the grounds that "the story is repugnant to Anglo-Saxon minds." (To prepare for the role, the amazing soprano Olive Fremstad had gone to the New York morgue and practiced carrying around severed heads to make sure she looked realistic doing so onstage.) The opera was performed elsewhere across America after 1909, but wasn’t played at the Met till 1934. Must read!! here is the opera-worthy story of the cancellation scandal.
Mighty Music
But the challenge wasn’t just the erotic and murderous themes, or that severed head, or the fact that someone who could sing brilliantly had to dance – though that wasn't easy. The biggest challenge was the music. This is Strauss’s first great opera – though not his first musically massive work. Here's a fascinating interpretation in Bachtrack - Salome as his greatest tone poem.
Spruiking their 2018 production, ENO wrote, ‘Strauss’s masterpiece is among the works that set the course of music in the last century.’ Alex Ross agrees: ‘The score is at once staggeringly original, more than a little trashy, and unsettling in its sexual and racial politics. When the clarinet slithers up a disjointed scale at the outset of the piece, the curtain effectively goes up on twentieth-century music.’
Atonality? There’s a splendid review of Alex Ross’s book, The Rest is Noise here. ‘Strauss’s opera Salome, which premiered in 1905, bends tonality in an even more daring way. At the end of that "ultra-dissonant biblical spectacle,” Ross writes, after Salome demands the head of Jokanaan and performs her lurid Dance of the Seven Veils, “the horns play fast figures that blur into a howl, the timpani pound away at a four-note chromatic pattern, the woodwinds shriek on high. In effect, the opera ends with eight bars of noise... Of course, Strauss’s dissonances give way, at times, to passages of spectacular lushness, of rich tonal opulence. Audiences were willing, it seems, to accept rampant dissonance, so long as it was accompanied by consonance, too, as a way of relieving the tension." '
And then there came Rosenkavalier.
Looking back, there’s more than a little influence of Wagner here. Leitmotifs are embedded strongly (as next year they would be in Strauss's Elektra.) Salome’s leitmotif occurs at the start – played by the clarinet, in a soft theme that is not quite tonal. At the end it’s a massive dump of sound. And for the massive sound, the orchestra is huge. (The music still contains several notes for strings and woodwinds that are unplayable because they are too low. Strauss told the players just to ignore this problem.)
And looking forward, to quote Ross again, ‘Many of the building blocks of Schoenberg’s post-tonal style—which came into being between 1907 and 1909—can be found in “Salome,” which introduced a new kind of frenzied, helter-skelter aesthetic into the music of the day. One recurring tic is a rapid run of notes that gives way to a trill—a kind of scurry-and-shake gesture. This became part of the lingua franca of modern music.’
Wikipedia has a brisk summary of the radical new orchestration and the extraordinary demands on the singers, particularly of course on the lead soprano - who has to look and dance like a ravishingly beautiful teenage child, but sing like a Wagnerian.
Our production
We're watching the famous performance by light lyric soprano Teresa Stratas, who never played Salome on the stage, but starred in this film version. It’s a studio film rather than a video recording of a live performance. This allows the casting of singers who might not be able to manage the role in the opera house. Details here. 'Stratas's sinuous child-woman comes close to the ideal in Friedrich's glitzy but unnerving film, strongly cast throughout and superbly conducted.'— BBC Music Magazine, August 2007.
Götz Friedrich, the film's director, wrote: 'Stratas inhabits the role, exploring the character's sensuousness as she vainly woos Jochanaan, her venomous hatred when she's rejected, the crazed look in her eyes when she demands his head--on a silver platter, no less.'
Do you want to watch a full opera? There’s a recording on YouTube of a 2010 classically produced performance with a splendidly acted Salome from soprano Erika Sunnegårdh for Bologna Teatro.
Synopsis?
Denis Forman offers a splendidly irreverent version of the opera’s story and structure. It’s available online here.
For a more solemn account, go to Wikipedia here or just use the excellent brief version here.
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