One of the great things about being general director, in between all the hard-work, organization and fund-raising that has to be done, is the opportunity to sit down with the other members of the team and looking at operas from the repertoire we think we’d like to do, including operas The Dallas Opera hasn’t performed in awhile.

Salome was certainly high on that list and a particular favorite of Music Director Graeme Jenkins.  Those of you who heard him conduct Ariadne auf Naxos will realize we’re in for a very special treat.  Adding to the excitement is soprano Mlada Khudoley in the title role, following her enormous success at Covent Garden in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades (and rave reviews for her standout performance in the Kirov Ring as part of this year’s Lincoln Center Festival).

I’d like to start by mentioning a few names:  Loie Fuller, American, born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1862; Maude Allan, Canadian, born in Toronto in 1873; Colette – the famous author of “Gigi,” a French woman born in 1873; Ida Rubinstein, a wealthy Jewish woman born in Russia in 1873; and Margaretha Zelle, better known as “Mata Hari,” born in the Netherlands in 1876.

What do these ladies have in common?

Well, it can best be summed up by the rather lurid tabloid headline, “Topless dancer with headless body!” because they were all ladies who danced the part of Salome.

And the fact that we see so many different women, from so many different backgrounds and countries, in this role, gives you some idea of the importance of this magical name, “Salome.”

Early 20^th century Paris saw a positive embarrassment of half-naked women dancing with seven veils (and often, papier-mâché heads to conceal their identities – if not their charms).  You could say that “Salomania” had gripped the French capital.  And by the outbreak of World War I, Salome was a regular feature in music halls, as well as opera, ballet and the theater.

So, where did it all start?

An astonishing number of settings of the Salome legend were produced in the 19^th century, both in literature and in painting.  Gustave Flaubert, of Madame Bovary fame, wrote a short story called “Herodias” on the subject of Salome in 1877.  We know that Oscar Wilde (who was bilingual) read it and liked it.  But it was really the paintings by Gustave Moreau, of Salome dancing in front of Herod that proved to be the stronger influence.

The paintings themselves have a strange mystical quality that laid the groundwork for the later expressionist movement in art, and Wilde mixed legend and history to create the ultimate example of sexual repulsion.  It was shocking then and remains so, today.

In his version of the story, Oscar Wilde clears up the confusion that existed about Salome and her mother Herodias, as to “who did what?”  He creates a scenario in which Salome, the young girl, is the centerpiece of the drama – moving away from historical fact and biblical interpretation. 

Originally written in French, Wilde’s Salome was instantly banned from the British stage after a performance in Paris.  In 1902, the play was produced in Berlin and composer Richard Strauss was in the audience.  Strauss, overwhelmed by the power of the story, began composing his opera that very night.

Strauss’ new opera premiered in Dresden, Germany, in 1905; fitting perfectly into that phenomenon of the late 19^th/early 20^th century, “Success by Scandal.”  There are numerous examples: Manet’s famous painting, “Le Déjeunes sur l’herbe” in which several gentlemen and a stark naked lady are enjoying a lovely picnic in the park, or, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which premiered in 1913 and was so scandalous that people fainted in the theater when they heard it.  You have to look at Salome in that same context, a society reveling in the joy of scandal.

The biblical account really consists of two short lines.  And in the Bible, it’s actually Salome’s mother, Herodias, who is the instigator; the one who manipulates her husband, Herod Antipas, into the beheading of John the Baptist.  In fact, the name “Salome” doesn’t appear in the Bible story at all!  We arrived at that name from other historical sources.  The entire tale is terribly incestuous because Salome’s mother, Herodias, was first married to Salome’s uncle.  She imprisoned her first husband in the same cistern, by the way, where the Baptist was held captive, and eventually had him decapitated, too.  Herodias then promptly married her brother-in-law, Herod Antipas.

The term “dysfunctional family” would be a radical understatement.

However, by the end of the 19^th century, we’re moving away from the barebones biblical story towards those famous depictions from Renaissance art of Judith holding the severed head of Holophernes.  It’s really that story and that imagery we’re dealing with here.  However, the patriotic story of the Jewish heroine, Judith, decapitating Holophernes in order to save her people is transformed into a tale about a young girl’s lust for a prophet, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the ancient world and everything to do with the late Victorian Era.

This exploration of sex and violence in which a young girl reveals her depravity by fondling the head of John the Baptist, is quite mad, as well as disgusting.  However, from the turn-of-the-century perspective, it’s a tale that – above all – makes great theater.

Particularly at the climax, when Salome finally possesses the now-dead Baptist and sings this ode of self-aware, self-obsessed love in one of the most amazing scenes in the entire opera repertory.  She’s had this extraordinary “Dance of the Seven Veils” and then has to sing for the next fifteen minutes, making the role a genuine tour de force.

The text that Salome warbles as she lusts over the head of the Baptist (translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas, Oscar Wilde’s lover), goes like this:

Neither the floods nor the great waters

Can quench my passion.

I was a princess

And thou didst scorn me.

I was a virgin

And thou didst take my virginity away from me.

I was chaste

And thou didst fill my veins with fire.

Then, in a lurid gesture of necrophilia, Salome kisses the mouth of the decapitated head – and finds it bitter.  Herod is utterly repelled and orders his soldiers to kill her.

This is an opera for those of us who love grand passions (which is what I think opera does better than anyone).

Many people have commented on the simplistic style of Oscar Wilde’s play, no doubt because the author wasn’t as proficient in French as he claimed to be.  But others have seen a genuine musicality in the essence of the text which made it especially easy to translate into an opera. 

Strauss pulled out all the stops; writing this piece for an enormous orchestra of 105 players.  An opera by Mozart, for example, would require 36 to 40 musicians; Rossini, around 45; one of Verdi’s operas, 60.  The orchestra pit in the Music Hall won’t even accommodate 105, so, we’re reducing that number and having some musicians play more than one instrument (including a Hecklephone!).

The composer pulls out one instrument after another to illustrate specific elements in the story, and has people do things you’re more likely to associate with 20^th century music: He has the violins sawing with the backs of their bows to create tension; the double bass player has to pinch the individual chords on the instrument to imitate the sound of a woman screaming and there are many other examples in this work, foreshadowing the direction of music in the 20^th century.

Strauss wrote completely unplayable low notes for the violin because it wasn’t just about the sound, it was about the concept behind the sound.  When the concertmaster turned to Strauss and complained, “Maestro, I cannot play that note, I don’t have it on my violin,” Strauss replied, “I just want you to concentrate and play the note from your soul.  The audience will feel it.”

It’s another sign of the arrival of a new era: Music is no longer constrained by the technical ability to play a note, it’s about achieving a psychological state of mind, one that is equally important to the creation of a work of art.

Or, as Salome herself might have said, “The desire to love has become just as important as the ability to love.”

When Salome opens in January, we’ll judge for ourselves.