Other Resources on Salome

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 10:30 PM | Link to this post

Here are a few more online articles on Wilde, Strauss, and Salome:

• Nancy Thuleen, Symbolism and Decadence in Wilde's Salome (1995)
  
• Delyse Ryan, Intertextuality and Oscar Wilde's Salomé
  
• Alex Ross, The Last Emperor: Richard Strauss (The New Yorker, December 20, 1999)
  
• Strauss’s Salome: Its Arts and Its Morals
  
• Salome, from Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcast

Wilde was certainly not the first to create a sensual story about the character of Salome. In an intermission feature for the Met broadcast of the opera (Salome: Lovable Creature of Excess, March 27, 2004), Nimet Habachy noted the following precursors of Wilde's play:

• Heinrich Heine's Atta Troll, in which Herodias, not Salome, kisses the severed head of John the Baptist
  
• Joris-Karl Huysmans's A Rebours (English translation: Against the grain), with a sensual description of Salome (1884)
  
• Gustave Flaubert's Hérodiade (English translation: Herodias), in which Herodias does the seductive dance for King Herod (the basis for Massenet's opera on this story, Hérodiade, 1880)
  
• Stéphane Mallarmé's Symbolist play Hérodiade, which he left incomplete

Wilde first conceived the role of Salome for the eccentric actress Sarah Bernhardt, who at a dinner party given by Henry Irving, asked him to write a play for her in French. Bernhardt was never able to perform the role that Wilde supposedly envisioned as divine and pure, supposedly suggested by the depiction of Bernardo Luini, Salome Receiving the Head of John the Baptist (c. 1525).

Richard Strauss was not the first composer to tackle the story of Salome: there had already been Massenet's Herodiade (see above), and a symphonic work by Glazunov (Salome, op. 90), which also focused on Herodias.

Artworks on Salome

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 8:13 PM | Link to this post

In creating his play, Oscar Wilde was probably inspired by a series of paintings by Gustave Moreau on the Salome story (1874–1876):

• Salome Dancing before Herod (from the UCLA Hammer Museum)
  
• The Apparition
  
• Salome with a Rose
  
• Salome with John the Baptist's Head on a Plate

Here are some of Moreau's sketches for these paintings. The English edition of Wilde's play was published with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley:

• Climax
  
• Herodias
  
• Peacock Skirt
  
• Stomach Dance
  
• Toilet of Salome

See also these images, these images, and these images of Salome.

Orchestration and Motives in Salome

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 8:43 PM | Link to this post

In Salome, Strauss wrote for a 105-piece orchestra, profiting from his experience of composing symphonic poems before he got into composing operas. Over half of that large ensemble is strings, including an overpowering violin section of 16 first violins and 16 second violins. That massed violin sound is heard prominently in Salome's scene with Jochanaan's severed head. There is a large brass section (six French horns, four trumpets, four trombones and one tuba), easily able to cover most singers by themselves. Some specialized instruments include harp, celeste, xylophone, triangle, tamborine, castanets. A metal beater is to be rubbed on a gong or tam tam to depict the rushing wind that Herod hears in his madness.

There are several musical themes that have been analyzed as "leitmotifs" in Salome. I think two are the most important. The first appears when Jochanaan ascends for the first time from the cistern. It is part of the "pure" C major music associated with the Baptist (as opposed to the C# music of Salome, full of dirty little accidentals), including the striking descending tritone, resolved from D# to E at the end. Salome sings part of this theme when she sets eyes on him the first time, and it accompanies the curse that Jochanaan places on Salome as he descends again into the cistern. The sinister, deep sounds of the bass clarinet and contrabassoon are associated with the darkness of Jochanaan's prison. There is also a very unusual instrument called a heckelphone, a four-feet-long bass oboe invented by Wilhelm Heckel.

The second major theme is heard first when Salome, as she first seems repulsed by Jochanaan, sings "Er ist schreklich" (He is terrible). This triadic theme, which seems to represent her obsessive lust, sounds in the orchestra as she fantasizes about kissing parts of his body. After appearing many times through the rest of the opera, it is again prominent when Salome finally kissed Jochanaan's mouth, on his severed head.

Psychological points found in Salome

Posted by Timothy M. Ballard at 12:32 PM | Link to this post

Herod – sub-govenor
Herodias – his wife and the wife of his dead brother
Salome – Her daughter
Jochanaan – John the Baptist
Narraboth – Soilder in love with Salome
Page in love with Narraboth

Page
|
|
V
Narraboth < - - - Herod < - - - Herodias
|
|
V
Salome < - - - Herod < - - - Herodias |
|
V
Jochanaan


I Look
Narraboth looks at Salome
Page looks at Narraboth
Herod Looks at Salome and Narraboth
Salome looks at Jochanaan
Jochanaan refuses to look at Salome

II Rejection
Salome rejects the Wine and Fruit and throne offered by Herod
She is rejected herself by Jochanaan
In the final scene she compares Jochanaan to Fine wine ad Fruit
She rejects the world for the taste of his lips


Look Body White
Touch Hair Black
Kiss Mouth Red

Blood = Love
Violence = Sex

Salome in her final scene wants Jochanaan’s viper to spit its venom on her once again.

September 17: Salome (1905)

Posted by Charles T. Downey at 12:07 AM | Link to this post

Aubrey Beardsley, "Climax" (1894, for English edition of Oscar Wilde's Salome)

Richard Strauss
World premiere: December 9, 1905, Court Opera, Dresden

American premiere: January 22, 1907, Metropolitan Opera, New York

Libretto: Hedwig Lachmann, German translation of the play by Oscar Wilde, Salome, a play in one act, originally written in French (corrected by Wilde's French friends) in 1891. Wilde's play was published in French in 1893, and then in an English translation by Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde's lover, in 1894. The play was premiered in Paris in 1896 (the original French version), in which director Aurélien Lugné-Poë cast the Page as a woman (often done in stage versions, as well as by Strauss). Toulouse-Lautrec designed the program.

The play was first performed in Germany at the Neues Theater in Berlin in 1903: Max Renhardt produced it based on the success of his earlier private production at the Kleines Theater in 1902. The production ran for 200 performances. Richard Strauss was in the audience for some of those performances.

Wilde's Salome has also been made into several different film versions, including Ken Russell's Salome's Last Dance (1988).

See also the The Salome Cartellone (on the text and music, in Italian).

Related Posts:

• Tim Ballard, Psychological points found in Salome
  
• Dr. Downey, Orchestration and Motives in Salome
  
• Phil Carluzzo, Salome Scandals
  
• Dr. Downey, Artworks on Salome
  
• Dr. Downey, Other Resources on Salome
  
• Grace Cho, Comparing Libretto of Salome in the New Testament and Oscar Wilde's play
  
• Kyoung-Hee Jung, Part 3:entrance of Herod, Herodias, and the court
  
• Lindsay Heller, "Salome": The "Dance of the Seven Veils" to the Beheading (pt. 4)

Available at Amazon:

Derrick Puffett, Richard Strauss: Salome, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (1989)	Richard Strauss, Salome, Hildegard Behrens, Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan
Richard Strauss, Salome, Birgit Nilsson, Vienna Philharmonic, Georg Solti