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Claus Guth banishes all orientalism and looks at his title heroine with a dissecting, psychoanalytical eye. Salome descends into the abysses of her youth, in which abuses by her stepfather have dug deep into her soul. And from these depths she creates her saviour Jochanaan, with whom she can take up the fight against her hated father ...



  • Conductor: Keri-Lynn Wilson
  • Staging by Claus Guth

With
Thomas Blondelle, Evelyn Herlitzius, Olesya Golovneva, Jordan Shanahan, Kieran Carrel, Annika Schlicht a. o.

Long after the Paris world premiere in 1896 Oscar Wilde’s tragedy “Salomé” remained a thorn in the flesh of the establishment across Europe.
In Wilhelminian Germany and the Danube Monarchy, too, official art adjudicators considered the subject “repulsive” and the text “an insult to morality”. In the minds of the guardians of public morals the New Testament story of Herod’s daughter was as ill-suited to the stage as it was to pictorial representation, which was experiencing a boom at the time.
Salomé’s stepfather, Herod, the Roman’s client king of Judea, Galilee and Samaria who is said to have ordered the massacre of the innocents around Bethlehem, persuades her to dance for him. Encouraged by her mother, she demands to be given the head of John the Baptist as a reward.

Official disapproval meant that the performance of Wilde’s play that Richard Strauss saw in 1902 in Max Reinhardt’s “Kleines Theater” in Berlin was a private function. The composer, who was already in possession of the beginnings of an opera libretto in verse form, resolved to use Hedwig Lachmann’s prose text as the basis for his composition.

His SALOME was one of the first literaturopern of the 20th century and reflected a number of operatic preferences of the time such as the predilection for one-act works and for exotic, oriental subjects. A literaturoper is an opera whose lyrics are lifted directly, albeit sometimes in shortened and rearranged form, from a pre-existing play.

Claus Goth, an internationally feted director since his MARRIAGE OF FIGARO in Salzburg in 2006, is taking on his first production at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
His SALOME focuses on the interior motivations of the characters and explores the power dynamic within the house of Herod. Will Salomé manage to break free from her hellish domestic situation?

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Additional information
In German with German and English surtitles.


  • A music drama in one act
  • Music and libretto by Richard Strauss
  • after the play SALOME by Oscar Wilde
  • Translation by Hedwig Lachmann
  • World premiere 9th December 1905 in Dresden
  • Premiere at the Deutsche Oper Berlin: 24th January 2016







Pre-performance lecture (in German): 45 minutes prior to each performance
Participating artists
Keri-Lynn Wilson (Musikalische Leitung)
Claus Guth (Inszenierung)
Muriel Gerstner (Bühne, Kostüme)
Olaf Freese (Licht)
Sommer Ulrickson (Choreografie)
Thomas Blondelle (Herodes)
Evelyn Herlitzius (Herodias)
Olesya Golovneva (Salome)
Jordan Shanahan (Jochanaan)
Kieran Carrel (Narraboth)
Stephanie Wake-Edwards (Ein Page)
Chance Jonas-O'Toole (1. Jude)
Thomas Cilluffo (2. Jude)
Jörg Schörner (3. Jude)
Burkhard Ulrich (4. Jude)
Gerard Farreras (5. Jude)
Joel Allison (1. Nazarener)
Geon Kim (2. Nazarener)
Andrew Harris (1. Soldat)
Tobias Kehrer (2. Soldat)
Stephen Marsh (Ein Cappadocier)
Thomas Cilluffo (Ein Sklave)
Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin (Orchester)
Opernballett der Deutschen Oper Berlin (Ballett)
Dates
March 2025
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