The 87th Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Festival starts with a new staging of Salome by Richard Strauss, his first operatic masterpiece that established him in the theatrical field: on the podium Alexander Soddy and directed by Emma Dante.

The opera’s debut on 9 December 1905 at the Semperoper in Dresden was met with resounding success, bringing Strauss fame and honour. The literary source was Oscar Wilde’s play Salome, which the composer chose to set to music in Hedwig Bachmann’s German translation. The story takes place at the court of King Herod in Tiberias, where John the Baptist (Jochanaan) is being held prisoner in a cistern. The prophet’s voice attracts Salome, the king’s beautiful stepdaughter, desired by many at court, especially her stepfather, who has a morbid passion for her. The princess, feeling irremediably attracted to Jochanaan, tries in vain to seduce him and after yet another refusal decides to ask Herod for his head, who accepts only after Salome performs a very sensual dance of the seven veils. The girl's desire is thus fulfilled but the horror reaches its peak when Salome, in a necrophilic impulse, kisses the mouth of the beheaded prophet, a gesture for which she will be executed. Wilde's drama had attracted Strauss not only for the audacity of the theme treated, but above all for the presence of such tormented and neurotic characters that would have allowed him to create extreme music, capable of following the violent disturbances of Salome's mind and the turbid thoughts of Herod and his courtiers.

The disorder of the psyche finds a perfect counterpart in a musical score where the mammoth orchestra is involved in a tumultuous vortex of dissonances and where an agitated, hysterical vocality prevails, far from any lyrical impetus.

New staging
More characters TBD (updated: August 22nd)

Poster © Gianluigi Toccafondo

April 13th performance will be broadcast prerecorded on Rai Radio 3