Organization

Singer

Soprano

Malin Byström

Salome

Asmik Grigorian

Ann Petersen

Tenor

Vincent Wolfsteiner

Herod

Roman Muravitsky

Mezzo-soprano

Iris Vermillion

Herodias

Elena Zelenskaya

Anna Maria Chiuri

Stage director

Claus Guth

Conductor

Tugan Sokhiev

Lighting designer

Olaf Freese

Costume designer

Ursula Kudrna

Set designer

Etienne Pluss

Video designer

Roland Horvath

Choreographer

Sommer Ulrickson

Baritone

Alexander Krasnov

John the Baptist

Thomas Johannes Mayer

Oliver Zwarg

Timofey Dubovitsky

Narraboth

Ilya Selivanov

Karina Kherunts

A Page of Herodias

Alina Chertash

Ivan Maksimeyko

First Jew

Second Jew

Maxim Paster

Dmitry Bobrov

Third Jew

Zakhar Kovalyov

Ruslan Yudin

Fourth Jew

Mikhail Yanenko

Bass

Valery Gilmanov

Fifth Jew

Vladimir Komovich

Denis Makarov

First Nazarene

Alexander Markeev

Alexander Chernov

Second Nazarene

Konstantin Artemiev

First soldier

Alexander Borodin

Second soldier

A Cappadocian

A slave

Marat Gali

Anna Maria Curie

Vida Mikneviciute

Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke

Elisabet Strid

Mikhail Guzhov

Bolshoi Theatre

The Metropolitan Opera

alemany

Moscow

Russia

Historic Stage

Poster

Public

Private

Approved

Salome Strauss,R

The premiere of the one-act opera by Richard Strauss "Salome" took place at the Royal Opera House Dresden on 9 December 1905. The performance - under the direction of conductor Ernst von Schuch with an orchestra increased to one hundred and twenty musicians and a brilliant cast of soloists, among whom were the famous Wagnerian singers Maria Wittich (Salome), Karel Burian (Herod) and Karl Parron (Iokanaan) - the author considered outstanding.

The scandalous reputation of Oscar Wilde's play (1891), which served as the basis for the libretto, written by the composer himself, further fueled interest in the new opera. Already in 1906, Salome appeared on the stages of sixteen European opera houses, including Leipzig, Cologne, Milan, Turin ... A year later - in New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels. The Austrian premiere, held in Graz in 1906 under the direction of the author, brought together the full color of the musical world: Gustav Mahler, Giacomo Puccini, Arnold Schönberg and Alban Berg were present in the hall, among other significant persons.

Salome actually marked the birth of Richard Strauss as an opera composer, who, prior to the premiere of this opera, achieved real success only in the symphonic genre. The perception of his opera music through the prism of the sound of a symphony orchestra was reflected in the first reviews: one of the critics, Friedrich Brandes, called the opera "an orchestral piece with an explanatory theatrical performance of opera singers." The culmination of the opera, the orchestral Dance of Salome, contributed greatly to this feeling. The understanding of the nature of Strauss' voices, combining the power of Wagner's vocal element with the subtlety and sophistication of chamber singing inherent in the Austro-German tradition, came later.

The premiere became a landmark event in the history of musical expressionism with its “striving beyond consciousness”, gravitation “towards borderline mental states, emotional tenseness, extreme subjectivity, often leading to deformation of the surrounding world <...> through the prism of the hero's perception” (musicologist Natalya Vlasova) ... This state was expressed in several musical compositions written shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, accumulating the accumulating tension and fear of the future.

In Russia, the performance of Salome became possible only after the revolutions of 1917: the main stumbling block for the theaters of the pre-revolutionary era was the image on the stage of the prophet John the Baptist (Jokanaan), which fell under the ban of the spiritual and censorship committees of the Russian Empire. The first Russian production to music from an opera by Richard Strauss was the ballet scene "Salome's Dance", presented at the Bolshoi Theater on February 6, 1921. This dance was staged by the famous choreographer Alexander Gorsky, the then head of the Bolshoi ballet troupe, and was performed by one of the leading ballerinas of the theater, Alexander Balashov.

On June 11, 1925, the entire opera was shown for the first time on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater. This performance (directed by Iosif Lapitsky, production designer Mikhail Kurilko) was practically transferred to the Bolshoi from the Leningrad State Academic Theater of Theaters, where the premiere took place a year earlier. From Leningrad was also invited the performer of the title role - the best Russian Salome of the 1920s, Valentina Pavlovskaya. This production was successful: it underwent renewal and remained in the repertoire until 1929. However, after her the stage history of this opera at the Bolshoi Theater was interrupted for almost a century.

The second production was staged on the Historical Stage in 2021 by the theater's chief conductor Tugan Sokhiev, famous German director Klaus Guth and set designer Etienne Plyuss (Switzerland).

The new performance of the Bolshoi Theater is stylistically consistent with the fin de siècle era, the time when Wilde and Strauss's Salome was born. However, the biblical story "sounds" in it very modern. This is a story about subconscious fears and an existential feeling of growing anxiety, about the desire to forget oneself in voluptuousness, about the passionate desire for freedom and the denial of patriarchal traditions. “If you listen attentively, there are dangerous chasms and abysses hidden behind the musical beauty of Strauss” (Klaus Guth).

English

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