The closing of the Brno opera season belongs to Richard Strauss’s Salome. The work, based on the play of the same name by British playwright Oscar Wilde, returns to the Brno stage after twenty-three years. The fourth Brno adaptation of this title was created by director David Radok. After having produced Britten’s Peter Grimes, he returns with chief conductor Marko Ivanović, costume designer Zuzana Ježková, Dragan Stojčevski as the new set designer and Andrea Miltnerová as the new choreographer. The title roles will be performed by Linda Ballová, Eva Urbanová, Jaroslav Březina and Birger Radde.
Inspired by the Gospel of Matthew, the story of the charming Salome, stepdaughter of King Herod, and her obsessive love for the prophet Yochanan really caused quite a scandal at the premiere. The work, full of powerful, dramatic music and rich orchestral passages, became a worldwide sensation and rightly remains so to this day.
"Today, nudity, blood, severed heads, incest and so on are commonplace in every other play. This was certainly not the case in 1905, and we must therefore find an adequate translation of what came as a shock in 1905. The shock of human behavior, of how far a person can fall. To come up with something that will have the same impact on today’s audiences, that has access to everything in the field of art. I think this is about breaking all taboos. When Salome seduces John the Baptist, it is not because she feels some erotic desire. She just wants to break the taboo, as though she wanted to seduce the Pope. She wants to seduce what is untouchable, what is completely beyond any normal person’s imagination," says director David Radok. The premiere is announced for 17 June 2023 at 7 p.m. at the Janáček Theatre.
The extremely demanding role of Salome is every dramatic soprano’s dream. Indeed, the composer himself described her as a sixteen-year-old girl with the voice of Wagner’s Isolde. In Brno, she will be taken on by soprano Linda Ballová, whom the audience knows as Tatiana from Eugene Onegin, for example. Eva Urbanová returns to the Janáček Opera NdB, this time in the role of Herodias, while Herod will be performed by Jaroslav Březina. The excellent German baritone Birger Radde will feature as Yochanan. Together with them, the audience can look forward to the members of the Brno ensemble, such as Vít Nosek as Narraboth and Jana Hrochová as the Page.
"Strauss’s musical language reflects the time of its composition. The beautiful melodies and the rhythm of the waltz are interwoven throughout the opera and are a testimony to the aesthetic ideals of high society at the time. Yet Strauss takes all these period features to extremes - the melodies are strained, the waltz distorts to frenzy, the chords become harmonically complicated beyond recognition. I think one can also find signs of today’s society in this description of decadence, which is probably why this work is performed so often even today," adds conductor Marko Ivanović.
No comment added yet..