March newsletter - just two weeks to Salome!
Greetings from the end of week three of our Salome rehearsals!
Mae Heydorn as Herodias, with Robin Whitehouse as Herodes, with the “Boy Band” behind.
Photo by Lexi Clare Photography
We’ve been having a marvellous time putting together a terrific show for you all. Now, I’d like to fill York Hall to the rafters on all six nights.
You can, if you’d really like to (I’d prefer you didn’t…) have a discount code for tickets if you like: that code is NEWSLETTER, which will give you 10% off.
Some people have been asking me: Why Salome? Why now? Why not Tannhäuser or Tristan, or could we kindly put on the entire Ring Cycle again, please…
I mean, for a start, after the 15 hour Ring Cycle, we could all do with a shorter, palate-cleanser, right?
Perhaps it is a tragedy, but there is a lot in Salome that made me think that this is the right piece for this right time.
Salome is about power; Salome herself is clearly the victim of some kind of prolongued abuse, and this story is about how she chooses to take back her power. Her father-in-law, Herodes, has killed her father in order to marry her mother, and she witnessed all of that. From the moment of her entry onto the stage, Salome is trying to control and manipulate, which of course, has disastrous consequences for John the Baptist, but how it works out for her, particularly in Mark Ravenhill’s reading of the final scene, is fascinating. Would she have resorted to this if she had not been a victim of Herodes’ abuse?
I am not going to pretend that this maps perfectly onto the things we see going on in the world today, but I do think that this opera, right now, is profoundly relevant.
Also, of course, Strauss’s opulent score, and our trademark of stunning singing, led by Kirsty Taylor-Stokes and Eleanor Dennis, make this quite the evening out!