operalovers

Features

Salome, Sacrilege and the Censor

Opera and the Bible: an unholy alliance?

Richard Strauss’s Salome, recently seen in a new production at the Royal Opera House, presents a biblical event in sensational terms. JULIAN GRANT examines operatic treatments of stories from the Good Book.

Even today, just over a century after its first performance, Richard Strauss’s Salome, with its necrophilia, teenage lust, whiff of incest and overall miasma of decadence and depravity, can pack a shocking punch. It seems something of a miracle that it ever made it to its premiere in Dresden in 1905.

Turning a prophet

Salome is the first and by far the most significant opera based on Oscar Wilde, whose play was originally written French, since it was deemed too shocking for English stages. Ten years on from the scandalous court case that had ended Wilde’s career in 1895, most of his work was not in print, and his name was not mentioned in polite society. In 1906 in Germany, one of Kaiser Wilhelm’s closest friends, Count Eulenberg, formed the centre of a trial as sensational as Wilde’s. These associations, combined with a biblical setting, put Salome beyond the pale for many of the censors who still dictated what could be shown on public stages. Gustav Mahler – who admired Salome enormously – was persuaded by Strauss himself not to resign from the Vienna Opera when the censor prevented a staging of the piece, which remained absent from the Austrian capital until 1918.

The first Salome, Marie Wittich, refused point blank to perform the Dance of the Seven Veils – “I won’t do it – I’m a respectable woman” – thereby setting the dubious precedent of performance of the dance by a double … at least this practice has permitted divas of purely vocal allure to essay the role.

At New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1907 Salome was withdrawn after one performance and a storm of protest, whipped up by the banker J. Pierpoint Morgan. As for London, Thomas Beecham’s memoirs humorously detail the tangle with the British censors in the run up to the 1910 premiere. In Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm only permitted Salome with a Star of Bethlehem shown onstage (even though the Nativity took place thirty years after the events of the opera); he said, “I like this fellow Strauss, but Salome will do him a lot of damage”. Strauss’ riposte: “The damage enabled me to build my villa at Garmisch”. Despite all the scandals, Salome appeared at fifty opera houses within two years.

A difficult Genesis

The bourgeois nineteenth century seems to have favoured religious music less than previous centuries – the most memorable religious concert works, such as Berlioz’ and Verdi’s Requiems are operatic rather than devotional. Most creators found the more titillating biblical subjects more promising for dramatic treatment, and most promoters found the inevitable skirmishes with the censors resistible. Rossini’s Pietro l’eremita,…

1 2 3 > Last ›