Final scene from Salome

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Final scene from Salome

“I won’t do it, I’m a respectable woman,” protested Marie Wittich on being presented with the part she would create in Richard Strauss’s Salome at the Dresden Court Opera in 1905. She was probably worried not so much by the Dance of the Seven Veils – a dancer would stand in for her at that point – as by Salome’s efforts to seduce John the Baptist and, after her frustration has led her to demand his decapitation, her erotic encounter with his severed head in the final scene. She was far from being alone in her worries about the morality of the work. But, while banned in Britain, the Oscar Wilde play on which Strauss’s libretto is based had recently met with spectacular success on the German stage and the opera was to prove no less sensational. On the first night in Dresden, with Frau Wittich in the title role, it was greeted by no fewer than 38 curtain calls.

The 16-year old Salome performs the Dance of the Seven Veils on the insistence of her stepfather Herod who, as Tetrarch of Judea, is used to getting what he wants. But she is cleverer than he thinks. She agreed to dance for him to indulge not his lust but, ultimately, her own. She has conceived a passion for Jokanaan (John the Baptist) whom Herod keeps captive, partly out of fear and partly out of respect, in an underground cistern. Her attempts to seduce the prophet have met with nothing but righteous revilement. When Herod promised her anything she wanted if she would dance for him she saw her chance and, having fulfilled her part of the bargain, she demands, horrifyingly, the head of Jochanaan “on a silver platter”. She will accept nothing Herod offers her in its place and, reluctantly giving in, he sends his executioner down into the cistern.

The final scene of the opera begins as Salome anxiously waits by the cistern for the delivery of her prize, her    choking emotions suggested by the weird sound produced from the top string of a solo double bass pinched between thumb and index finger (a device Strauss learned from Berlioz). While she fretfully asks why it is taking so long her repetitive vengeance motif is heard rumbling on timpani and horns and another theme, associated with her from the start, on bassoons. A nasty thud on cellos and basses seems to signify that the deed is done but she refuses to believe it until suddenly, as her voice rises in a    paroxysm of petulant impatience, every instrument except an ominous bass drum falls into shocked silence. The executioner’s arm emerges from the cistern bearing Jokanaan’s severed head on a silver platter.

What follows is, in Salome’s imagination, a love scene: it is intermittent and, obviously, very one-sided but it is not without moments of erotic ecstasy even so. Strauss defines those moments largely by elevating radiant major harmonies out of the dissonant turmoil. At first, after the huge surge of excitement as she takes the platter, her desire for Jokanaan – signalled by a yearning five-note cry on upper woodwind and second violins – can achieve harmonies no more gratifying than C sharp minor even though she dwells longingly on the word “kiss”. That is, however, an indication of the thrill she is looking for but cannot reach while she continues to proclaim her power over Jokanaan and to utter recriminations about his failure to look at her and speak to her. Her harmonies do not achieve C sharp major radiance until she recalls their first encounter: “You were beautiful”, she sings tenderly, her desire motif now softened by gentle oboes and violins and entering the vocal line as she describes his physical attractions. Her “Nothing in the world was as white as your body”, proclaimed in romantic unison with violins, is as rapturous a declaration of love as any. Solo viola and solo violin share her admiration of his voice and woodwind echo the “mysterious music” she heard when she saw him.

She loses that rapture, however, in more recriminations and sheer lust, her desire motif now militant on trumpets. She recovers it, once again in C sharp major, as she sings for the second time of her conviction that “if you had looked at me you would have loved me.” The moment when she kisses Jokanaan’s dead lips, accomplished to eerie woodwind trills and the desire motif on shrill piccolo and oboe, is more chilling than erotic. Rapture returns in a last, orgasnic outburst: “I have kissed you mouth, Jokanaan”. Horrified by what he sees, Herod commands his soldiers to kill her. The actual order we do not hear in this version but the crushing end is cruelly clear on brass and percussion in cold C minor.

Gerald Larner © 2010