SALOME

Your work is a meteor, the power and brilliancy of which commands the attention of everyone, even those who dislike it.

Romain Rolland, in a letter to Richard Strauss, dated 14 December 1907

In a twilight Palestine – shortly before the coming of the Messiah – Salome falls in love with the prophet Iokanaan who rejects her. Her stepfather Herod has eyes only for her, but she rejects him as well. Dual and morbid frustration: in exchange for a dance, the princess demands the head of the saint. Life and death urges, sexuality and religion intertwine and thus shape an inflammatory meteorite. Salome – an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play – is a high point of vocal incandescence that is carried by the most expressive and elaborate orchestration of modern times. This decadently orientalist and symbolist masterpiece was thereby first banned from public performance but was then programmed everywhere. Andrea Breth and Ingo Metzmacher – to whom the Festival owes the unforgettable Jakob Lenz in 2019 – tell together a story that goes from German Romanticism to the end of the contemporary world: an extraordinary love story above all and an exemplary quest for the absolute. Elsa Dreisig sings the title role for the first time and combines total engagement and youthful appeal.

• LE TEMPS
  Au Festival d’Aix, Elsa Dreisig permet à Salomé de retrouver son ingénuité
  […] ce n’est pas seulement une chanteuse qui chante bien, c’est une artiste qui revendique sa liberté artistique et qui manifestement aime les défis.
  […] la scène finale est magistrale […]. Dans un sourire énigmatique entre satisfaction et folie on mesure alors le talent de l’interprète.
   
• LE SOIR
  Un festival est par nature un endroit où l’on va voir ce qu’on ne voit pas ailleurs. Pari réussi à Aix avec Résurrection [...] et Salomé [...] revisités par Castellucci et Breth.