Heartbeat Opera’s English-language Salome continues at the Space at Irondale through February 16 (photo by Russ Rowland)
SALOME
The Space at Irondale
85 South Oxford St., Brooklyn
February 4-16, $21.79-$114.25
www.heartbeatopera.org/salome
“When it premiered, it was extremely shocking to its audiences because it was dangerous and there were so many taboos that get broken in it,” co-adaptor and director Elizabeth Dinkova says about Richard Strauss’s Salome, which Heartbeat Opera is presenting this month in a rare English-language version at the Space at Irondale. In the promotional video, she continues, “There are a few core mysteries at the center of this piece around what it means to be in love, and the great terror and violence that erupts when you’re not.”
Oscar Wilde’s 1891 play about the first-century Jewish princess who was the daughter of Herodias and stepdaughter of Herod II was translated into German by Hedwig Lachmann and became the libretto for Strauss’s opera, which debuted in Dresden in 1905. Tom Hammond translated the work into English in the late 1980s for the English National Opera, and now Dinkova and co-adaptor, music director, and conductor Jacob Ashworth have collaborated on a new version for seven singers, eight clarinetists, and two percussionists. The cast features Summer Hassan as Salome, Patrick Cook as Herod, Nathaniel Sullivan as Jokanaan (John the Baptist), Manna K Jones as Herodias, David Morgans as Narraboth, Jaharis as Page Melina, and Jeremy Harr as a soldier; Francesca Federico will perform the title role on February 9.
Heartbeat has previously staged unique versions of such classics as Eugene Onegin, Tosca, and Fidelio as well as the original The Extinctionist. Up next is a one-hundred-minute retelling of Charles Gounod’s Faust at Baruch Performing Arts Center in May.
In the video, music arranger Dan Schlosberg explains, “This was a scandal, this piece; [Strauss] wrote it, and he knew that people were going to be scandalized.”
Heartbeat Opera attempts to bring back that sense of shock and scandal in its take on Salome, which promises, among other things, a “Dance of the Seven Veils” like you’ve never seen before.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]