On Screen: Salome (Met Opera)

Orcas Center presents on the Center Stage Screen:
Met Opera: Salome

Thursday, June 12th at 7pm
Runtime: 1 hours 40 minutes with intermission

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts his first Met performances of Strauss’s white-hot one-act tragedy, which receives its first new production at the company in 20 years. Claus Guth, one of Europe’s leading opera directors, gives the biblical story—already filtered through the beautiful and strange imagination of Oscar Wilde’s play—a psychologically perceptive, Victorian-era setting rich in symbolism and subtle shades of darkness and light. Headlining the new staging is soprano Elza van den Heever as the abused and unhinged antiheroine, who demands the head of Jochanaan, sung by celebrated baritone Peter Mattei. Tenor Gerhard Siegel is Salome’s lecherous stepfather, King Herod, with mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as his wife, Herodias, and tenor Piotr Buszewski as Narraboth.

The story of this incendiary and powerful opera is derived from a brief biblical account: A young princess of Judea dances for her stepfather Herod and chooses as her reward the head of the prophet John the Baptist. This subject captured the imaginations of generations of visual artists, but its full possibilities were perhaps best realized in Oscar Wilde’s 1891 tragedy (which was banned from performance in several countries). Strauss’s score combines the grandeur of Wagner’s epics with the focus and emotional punch of the short Italian verismo operas.

You may also like the following events from Orcas Center:

• This Friday, 2nd May, 06:30 pm, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in Eastsound
• This Saturday, 3rd May, 04:00 pm, The Orcas Center Spring FUNdraiser - Mad Hatter Dinner! in Eastsound
• Next Friday, 9th May, 04:00 pm, Farewell but not Goodbye: Open House Celebration for Dimitri Stankevich in Eastsound

Also check out other Arts events in Eastsound.