About this Piece

The opera is based on Oscar Wilde’s play Salome, with deviations from the original. I had already written another Wilde opera as surreal as Salome, The Importance of Being Earnest. Salome also belongs to the fantastical world of my opera Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, on the Lewis Carroll text. Both operas share madness, ecstasy, humor, and murder.

Salome is an opera of voyeurism, the moon, French, God, punishment of sin, misunderstanding, sex, the metronome, suicide, hysteria, hunger, blood, typing, speaking correctly, sterility, The Blue Danube, the wind, fever, art, Wilde, dreaming, beheading, Frankenstein, kissing.

Salome is a typist and Herod dictates to her Oscar Wilde’s letter “De Profundis,” written while he was imprisoned.

“A surreally decadent, absurdist world…. Like his topsy-turvy The Importance of Being Earnest, Barry’s Salome approaches the subject matter from a radically new angle—so radical that any comparison with a certain other famous Salome opera is rendered all but superfluous. Out of Wilde’s words, luxuriating in tantalizing language and imagery, Barry creates his own libretto in English, French and German, into which he throws other additional text from Wilde, Beethoven and elsewhere.

“As with Barry’s other recent operas, Salome knows not to overstay its welcome: the whole thing is over in little over an hour, its sheer absurdist energy drawing you completely into its world…it’s certainly a riot.” — Opera Now

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Salome Synopsis: 

Cast:
Salome

The Queen
The King
The Prisoner

A Young Syrian
Soldier

It begins with two soldiers, one a young Syrian in love with Salome, and the other warning that something terrible will come from this love. They say the moon has a strange look, like a woman who’s dead.

The Prisoner cries out from below ground: “After me will come another mightier. The eyes and ears of the blind and deaf will be opened.” As he speaks only French, no one understands him.

Salome appears and wonders why The King, her stepfather, looks at her. She says the moon is cold like a virgin and a little piece of money.

The Prisoner cries out: “The Lord has come!”

Salome says she’s heard that The King is afraid of the Prisoner and that he says terrible things about her mother, The Queen. She commands to meet him.

The Prisoner gives Salome a singing lesson and corrects her faulty interpretation. He adds that Salome’s mother, The Queen, is a whore.

The Soldier says the moon looks strange.

The Orchestra notes The Prisoner’s nastiness.

Salome says The Prisoner’s eyes are like black holes and thinks he is as chaste as the moon. She wants his body, hair, and mouth. She wants to kiss his mouth. The Prisoner refuses. The soldiers also want to kiss his mouth.

Unable to bear Salome’s obsession with The Prisoner, The Young Syrian kills himself but recovers to sing.

The Orchestra says it wants to kiss The Prisoner’s mouth.

The King and Queen appear. The King slips on The Young Syrian’s blood and says the moon looks strange. He is fearful of the wind, that it is like the beating of wings, and that Salome looks sick. He offers Salome wine and fruit and wants to see the mark of her teeth in the fruit.

The Prisoner foretells the coming of the Lord God. The Queen says he is always vomiting insults at her and accuses The King of being afraid of him. “You have a dreamer’s look. You mustn’t dream. Only sick people dream.”

They all sing a chorale, “Sensual Gratification,” from an entry in Beethoven’s diary.

The Prisoner says, “The sun will become black like hair, the moon like blood, all kings will be afraid.”

The King repeatedly begs Salome to type for him but she refuses.

The Prisoner says The King will be eaten by worms, but the King says he is happy.

They all sing The Blue Danube.

The King speaks, choosing different speeds on his metronome. He is cold and terrified of the wind and a huge, hovering black bird.

He again begs Salome to type for him and swears he will give her whatever she wants if she agrees.

The Soldiers tutor him in speaking.

Salome agrees to type and the King is ecstatic. He’s worried that she types with naked feet because of blood on the ground, and says the moon is red like blood.

The King dictates to Salome a letter from Oscar Wilde.

She types.

All enter a Dada dream state.

The King is in a fever and fears that the “Finger of God” has touched The Prisoner, that if he dies “something awful might happen to me.” The Orchestra exclaims at his distress.

As a reward for typing, Salome asks for The Prisoner’s head.

There follows a Body Parts scene from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Salome and the Soldiers type, reminding The Prisoner that his refusal to kiss their mouths must have consequences, Salome saying: “I’m hungry for your body. Hungry. What shall I do?”

The King says, “Hide the moon.”

All join in a triumphant “I have kissed your mouth” chorale.