Jochanaan curses and rejects her. King Herod has promised Salome whatever she wants if she will only dance for him. Salome requests the head of the prophet on a silver platter. Nothing else will do, not even the riches offered by Herod instead. Once she is presented with the prophet's head, Salome passionately kisses it on the lips, in a scene where her passion and desire border on hysteria.
Horrified, Herod has her killed. The princess Salome, daughter of Herodias becomes tired of the feasting and guests at a banquet offered by Herod, Tetrarch of Judea, and her mother's husband. How can she avoid his lustful gaze? Salome comes out onto the terrace in order to catch a breath of fresh air and finds herself face to face with the young Syrian, Narraboth, captain of the guard, who is obsessed with her beauty.
Suddenly the voice of the Prophet Jochanaan John the Baptist is heard, rising from his prison in the palace cistern. In the presence of the guards and Salome, who is captivated by his voice, Jochanaan predicts the return of the Messiah. She has even managed to convince Narraboth to let him out of the cistern. The prophet stands before Salome, making prophecies and condemning Herod's court - he even curses Herodias. But Salome pays no attention to his words.
Filled with an overwhelming desire for him, she confesses she wishes to touch his skin and kiss his lips. The head was brought in on a dish and given to the girl; and she carried it to her mother.
The same story makes an appearance, told in quite similar terms, in the Gospel of Mark. In both cases, it segues to the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, which pastors have been more comfortable recounting to their flocks over the years. Visual artists had been drawn to its grisly details since the Renaissance, with memorable depictions coming from the brushes of Fra Filippo Lippi, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Titian, Caravaggio, and Guido Reni, to cite just a few famous names.
No longer was she merely the dancing-girl who extorts a cry of lust and concupiscence from an old man by the lascivious contortions of her body; who breaks the will, masters the mind of a King by the spectacle of her quivering bosoms, heaving belly and tossing thighs; she was now revealed in a sense as the symbolic incarnation of world-old Vice, the goddess of immortal Hysteria, the Curse of Beauty supreme above all other beauties by the cataleptic spasm that stirs her flesh and steels her muscles, — a monstrous Beast of the Apocalypse, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible, poisoning.
The play was originally published in French, in , and the following year it appeared in English translation, accompanied by what would become renowned illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. Sarah Bernhardt scheduled its premiere for London in , but the governmental licensor of plays put the kibosh on it, admonishing that it was forbidden to present stage plays with biblical characters. The premiere did not take place until , when it was given in Paris, in French. After Wilde was released, in , he moved immediately to the Continent, and he died in Paris in , at the age of forty-six.
The piece met a different fate in Germany. He already knew about the work, since a young Viennese poet had approached him earlier proposing to adapt it into a libretto. Once he embarked on the project, he trimmed the piece considerably, which is normally the direction things take when a stage play is turned into an opera libretto.
Among the excised material is the frequent repetition of text, which in the French version is so prevalent as to yield an incantatory aura. He provided a sumptuous score that was exceptional even by the lavish aspirations of his time.
When he composed Salome , Strauss had just recently reached the provisional end of the string of symphonic poems that had occupied him since the s, compositions that served as a workshop for his imaginative manipulation of orchestral resources.
Salome served as a conduit for everything Strauss had mastered in that field, both practical and theoretical. His instrumentation list for the piece suggests that its orchestra would ideally comprise players, although the forces are typically slimmed down by about 30 musicians in most stagings.
The slenderizing comes out of the 60 or 62 string instruments Strauss lists; many orchestra pits and theater budgets simply cannot accommodate so many. There, Strauss calls for at least four of each instrumental clan — for example, four of the flute family in this case three flutes and a piccolo , four of the oboe family two standard oboes plus an English horn and the deep-voiced heckelphone , and so on.
Even at that, there are six parts for various clarinets and six for French horns, and the percussion complement is usually divvied up among eight or nine players, factoring in two timpanists.
Together, all these instruments make an overwhelming sound, but they also offer a detailed array from which the composer puts together unusual instrumental combinations of colorful delicacy. We meet Herod son of the Herod notorious from the Christmas story , who seems simultaneously imperious and pusillanimous and whose loins itch for his stepdaughter, Salome.
Strauss reels out the story in discrete episodes, all in a single act running about an hour and three-quarters. Naxos Javascript not enabled. Work Title Salome Alt ernative. Duration minutes Composer Time Period Comp. Operas ; Theatrical Works ; For voices, orchestra ; Scores featuring the voice ; Scores featuring the orchestra ; For voices with orchestra ; German language ; For cello arr ; Scores featuring the cello arr ; For 1 player arr.
Pieces based on Salome. Contents 1 Performances 1. Hamburg: Deutsche Grammophon , Source: Internet Archive. Javascript is required for this feature. Pub lisher. Plate A.
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