Salome from the Salzburg Festival

Leading Team Franz Welser-Möst and Romeo Castelucci present their version of the dance of the seven veils.

The second premiere at this year’s Salzburg Festival promises an interesting interpretation of Richard Strauss' SALOME. This year’s “Salome” is after 25 years only the third production in the festival’s history and promises to be a truly unique one.

Under the musical direction of Franz Welser-Möst, Austria's foremost Strauss conductor, the Wiener Philharmoniker will perform the ravishing score, which Strauss created in 1903 when he set an abridged German translation of Oscar Wilde’s bible-based play “Salomé” to music. Stage director Romeo Castellucci, receiver of the Biennale’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, will present his powerful take on Strauss’s opera at the Felsenreitschule.

With the figure of femme fatale Salome, now the epitome of perverted lust, Strauss’s work caused a scandal when premiered in Dresden in 1905 and was even banned from the stages of London, Vienna and New York. Asmik Grigorian, who won the Young Female Singer prize at the International Opera Awards in 2016 and who wowed audiences at last year’s Salzburg Festival with her performance as Marie in “Wozzeck”, will take on the challenging title role of Salome, who is presented as a pivot and a flame, which enlivens everything present and finally consumes itself in the dance of the seven veils.

To stand by her side are John Daszak as Herod, Anna Maria Chiuri as Herodias, Gábor Bretz as Jochanaan and Julian Prégardien as Narraboth.

Henning Kasten will be responsible for TV broadcast from the Felsenreitschule.

A production of ORF, 3sat and UNITEL in collaboration with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Salzburg Festival

Broadcast on: July 28th 2018, 22.00, ORF 2

English title Richard Strauss' "Salome"
Recording location Felsenreitschule
Director Henning Kasten
Producer ORF, 3sat and UNITEL
Recording date July 28th 2018