The theme of fatal femininity has been present in art basically forever. He inspired poets, composers and painters to create captivatingly evocative works that are still able to make a great impression on the recipient today. The program of the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic concert includes compositions by three artists whose common denominator is the femme fatale motif . Musicians were inspired by literature: a play by Oscar Wilde, the famous drama by Johann Wolfgang Goethe and a novel by Prosper Mérimé. The concert will be led by Gergely Madaras, born in 1984 in Budapest, the current artistic director of the Orchester Philharmonique Royal de Liège.
The first will be the sensual, sometimes even orgiastic Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome by Richard Strauss. In the opera, King Herod Antipas wants to see Princess Salome dance, and she agrees on the condition that the king gives her anything she wants. The monarch agrees to the demand, and the titular heroine wishes, to Herod's dismay, that the severed head of John the Baptist be served on a platter. However, an oath is an oath and Salome gets her reward, which contributes to her death. The audience at the beginning of the 20th century was appalled by the erotic atmosphere of this work, and although today this opera no longer outrages anyone, it still fascinates with the colorfulness and suggestiveness of the musical language used by the composer.
No less colorful are three excerpts from Hector Berlioz's dramatic legend The Condemnation of Faust : the slightly ethereal, slightly demonic Minuet of the Imps , the lacy Dance of the Sylphs , or the energetic Hungarian March . The latter link was established in 1846 during Berlioz's trip to Budapest. In order to win the favor of the local audience, the composer decided to write a work using an authentic Hungarian melody. The choice fell on the Rákóczi March, whose author was probably Nicolaus Scholl. Berlioz's intuition did not disappoint him - he was a huge success, and he liked the piece so much that, after minor alterations, he included it in The Condemnation of Faust, placing the action of the first part of the work on the Hungarian plain.
The second part of the concert featured both suites from Georges Bizet's Carmen . Although it may seem unbelievable to us today, the work, first exhibited in March 1875, was a complete failure. There were several reasons – sung fragments alternated with spoken parts, which disqualified the composition as suitable for staging at the Paris Opera. So Carmen was presented in the Comic Opera, where the audience, in turn, did not like the tragic ending and the setting of the action among the workers and smugglers. However, the extraordinary melodic invention of the French composer combined with the colorfulness of the music and its Spanish exoticism made the story of the Gypsy femme fataleis currently enjoying great popularity. Both suites, which will be conducted by maestro Madaras, were arranged after the artist's death by his friend Ernest Guiraud.