Music drama in one act
Libretto: Richard Strauss after Oscar Wilde
World premiere: 9 December 1905, Semperoper, Dresden
Premiere of this production: 23 October, National Theatre, Prague
Premiere at the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera: 22 March 2016
Co-production: National Theatre, Prague

In the original German with Polish surtitles.

22 March 2016 Tuesday 19:00 Moniuszko Auditorium

23 March 2016 Wednesday 19:00 Moniuszko Auditorium

24 March 2016 Thursday 19:00 Moniuszko Auditorium

Salome, alongside Elektra, is considered to be one of the most powerful of Richard Strauss’s works. This completely modern staging explores the hidden family relations between a stepfather (Herod), his stepdaughter (Salome) and her powerlusting mother (Herodias). This family drama is at the same time a tragedy of faith, despair, fear and helplessness, in which the title character plays her game with the prophet Jochanaan, the elusive object of her obsessive desire — or perhaps just a voice, a hallucination, a phantasm imposing a powerful metaphysical anxiety upon reality?

The game takes place also between Salome and Herod, her perverse stepfather, living in constant fear of death and that which is final. The heroine, through her desire to capture the elusive, makes an absurd request: she wants the head of the prophet on a silver platter. In the staging this biblical drama is played out simultaneously in a wealthy bourgeois world and in a space between reality and fantasy.

The modern fragmentary narrative — a trademark of Mariusz Treliński’s style — forms a series of subtle images and visions of a world only seemingly stable, over which hangs the threat visible in the first signs portending tragedy.

GALLERY (Photos Opera Narodowa)

Jacek Laszczkowski  Herod

Veronika Hajnová  Herodias

Erika Sunnegårdh Salome

Jacek Strauch  Jochanaan

Pavlo Tolstoy Narraboth

Marta Motkowicz  The Page of Herodias

Stefan Soltesz Conductor

• Mariusz Treliński Director
• Boris Kudlička Set designer
• Marek Adamski Costume designer
• Tomasz Wygoda Choreography
• Piotr Gruszczyński  Literary consultant
• Orchestra of the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera
  Dancers and mimes