STRAUSS : SALOME

STRAUSS'S SALOME

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 16th of December 2007 at 3 pm

COMPOSER

BACKGROUND

SYNOPSIS

STORYLINE


STRAUSS: Salome, an opera in one act
Salome.......................... Montserrat Caballé
Jokanaan....................... Sherrill Milnes
Herod Antipas............... Richard Lewis
Herodias....................... Regina Resnik
Narraboth..................... James King
Page of Herodias........... Julia Hamari
First Jew....................... Kenneth MacDonald
Second Jew.................. Robert Bowman
Third Jew...................... David Lennox
Fourth Jew.................... John Brecknock
Fifth Jew....................... George MacPherson
First Nazarene............... Michael Rippon
Second Nazarene.......... Gwyn Griffiths
First Soldier.................. Neil Howlett
Second Soldier.............. David Kelly
Cappadocian................. Dennis Wicks
Slave............................. Elizabeth Bainbridge
London SO/Erich Leinsdorf (RCA 6644 2 RG)

This time we can draw on the resources of the NYMetropera ! And it won't be long before we are listening to their next season, when our Simon O'Neill sings Siegmund in Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), only they say he will not be in the broadcast. I was sure that it was Simon's picture at the top of their page all this year. Go to:
http://www.operainfo.org/

The RNZ broadcast of Salome is to celebrate the Gramophone Award for Lifetime Achievement given to a soprano who we thought was going to be another Victoria de los Angeles, but who came to be an ardent exponent of the two German Richards (Wagner and Strauss): Montserrat Caballé from Barcelona.

My recordings of this wild Wilde opera have Birgitt Nilsson with Georg Solti (purchased for $1), and Hildegard Behrens with Herbert von Karajan (World Record Club). And I have on videotape, without pictures, from a radio broadcast, the festival performance in Wellington, in which the soprano did not call in a dancer as a temporary substitute, but performed the feat herself, and took off the seven veils as she danced; for a variety of reasons people wished she had not. Rodney McCann (president of the Baptist Church) was made for the part of Jokanaan (John the Baptist).