Episode 005: Salome with Perri DiChristina

Is Salome a victim of circumstance, or the destroyer of empires? Mezzo-soprano and one opera’s philosophical fug girls Perri DiChristina joins us to dive head-first into Strauss’s fin-de-siècle shocker. Additional topics include: Greta Thunberg and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Oscar Wilde’s moodboard, and why John Pierpont Morgan sucked.

Follow Perri via Thrilled to Announce (also on Substack and Instagram as @thilledtoannounceee), and on Instagram at @pricklyper.

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Simon says:

“When Mary Garden appeared in the opera at the Manhattan Opera house two years later, one of the pulpit protesters was Billy Sunday. After his attack (delivered without hearing or seeing the performance), Miss Garden met Sunday, shared an ice-cream soda with him, and made it all up. Today’s public has made it all up analogously with composer and librettist, and it is only a rare and courageous oldster who will dare to admit that he is still shockable by what remains a willfully vivid projection of degeneracy.”

(100 Great Operas. and Their Stories)

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Salome: The story

• Act I

  Evening.

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Recordings cited

• Malin Byström, Evgeny Nikitin, Daniele Gatti: Salome (RCO Live, 2019)

• Gwyneth Jones, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Karl Böhm: Salome (Deutsche Grammophon, 1971)

• Teresa Stratas, Bernd Weikl, Karl Böhm: Salome (Deutsche Grammophon, 1975)

• Karita Mattila, Juha Uusitalo, Patrick Summers: Salome (Met Opera On Demand, 2008)

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Further reading

• Derrick Puffet: Salome (Cambridge Opera Handbooks) (1989)

• Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays (1893, 2025 ed)

• Gustave Flaubert: Three Tales (1877, 2005 ed)

• Alex Ross: The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007)

• Edward Said: Music at the Limits (2009) — includes Said’s writings on Strauss

• Charles Youmans: The Cambridge Companion to Richard Strauss (2010)

• Bryan Gilliam: Richard Strauss and His World (1992)

• Alex Ross: “The Endless Grisly Fascination of Strauss’s Salome” (The New Yorker, 2019)‍ ‍

• Imparo Ancora: “Salome Condemned: The Unqualified Disapproval of a Distinguished Physician” (The New York Times, 1907)

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Playlist

“Wie schön ist die Prinzessin Salome heute nacht”

Peter Sonn, Hanna Hipp / 2019

“Wo ist er, dessen Sundenbecher jetzt voll ist?”

Johan Reuter / 2025

“Wer ist dies weib”

Johan Reuter, Lise Davidsen/ 2024

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“Jochanaan! Ich bin verliebt.”

Elza van den Heever / 2025

“Wird dir nicht bange, Tochter der Herodias?”

Peter Mattei, Elza van den Heever / 2025

“Salome, komm, trink Wein mit mir”

Lise Lindstrom, Allan Glassman / 2013

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Dance of the Seven Veils

Malin Byström / 2018

“Salome, ich beschwöre dich”

Richard Cassilly, Gwyneth Jones / 1971

“Ah! Du wolltest mich nicht deinen Mund küssen lassen”

Maria Ewing / 1997

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“Dein lieb war eine Elfenbeinsanle”

Lise Davidsen / 2024

Finale

Teresa Stratas / 1975

Complete Performance

Heartbeat Opera / 2025

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