Singer

Musikdrama in one act by Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
after Oscar Wilde’s play of the same name

EPSG:4326

Salome

Opernhaus Zürich

In Leoš Janáček’s opera, Kát’a Kabanová, the eponymous heroine is ensnared at the heart of an ominous mesh of relations. Her domineering mother-in-law, Kabanicha, oppresses and controls her son Tichon, whose marriage to Kát’a suffers massively from heteronomy. Because Kát’a finds no fulfilment in this family, she flees and fulfils her unsatisfied erotic desires in an affair with Boris. As composer and librettist, Janáček bundles the plot of the literary template, Alexander N. Ostrovsky’s drama, The Storm. The libretto largely dispenses with the portrayal of the external social circumstances, from whence Kát’a’s essence and choices are decisively determined. Instead, Janáček traces the development of the title character in a psychological-sensitive musical language. Kát’a’s feelings of guilt increase continuously until they discharge into a public confession as an emotional storm. The turbulent and in places fanciful music opens the space for passages of lyrical grace and allows us to experience the essence of the characters. In Kát’a, director Krzysztof Warlikowski sees an outsider, who is denied a life in harmony with her desires, and at the end prefers death over lies. The destructive power of religion behind it all is not only found in a small Russian town on the banks of the Volga in the 1860s, where the libretto places the plot, but rather can also be seen everywhere all over the world.

Káťa Kabanová

Max-Joseph-Platz

The war is over, and tragedy takes its course: the mother and her lover murder the father upon his return. The daughter hides her brother, keeping him safe. – Every day, Elektra thinks of her murdered father, plotting blood-stained celebrations of victory and waiting for the moment when her brother, reared as an avenger, returns. Under one roof with her father’s murderers, thirst for blood and revenge collide with the future plans of her younger sister, who longs for marriage and children, a life in harmony and bliss. The mother is governed by another delusion: “It is not a word, it is not pain, it does not pinch me or strangle me, … and yet it is so terrible that my soul wishes it had been hanged, and every part of my body cries out for death.” Sacrifice is meant to bring relief.

Elektra

Staatsoper Hamburg

A scandalous play by Oscar Wilde meets the explosive music of Richard Strauss: the result is musical storytelling at its most captivating. Soprano Jennifer Holloway brings her celebrated interpretation of the title role—one of opera’s most challenging vocal feats—to Jones Hall for these performances.

Strauss Festival: Salome in Concert

Jones Hall

Elektra relentlessly invokes the past, her trauma, her burning desire for revenge: Her father Agamemnon, barely back from the Trojan War, is dead, murdered in his bath by her mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Richard Strauss wrote music of piercing power, profound and relentless, which offers no redemption to any of the characters until Elektra's ecstatic final dance. Following her visually stunning production of "Der Rosenkavalier" at the Zurich Opera House, director Lydia Steier now turns her attention to Strauss's dark counterpart. On the podium is the Lausanne-born conductor and designated Zurich General Music Director Lorenzo Viotti. In the demanding title role, Finnish soprano Miina-Liisa Värelä makes her Zurich debut.

On the banks of the Volga, in a small Russian town, lives a poetic soul: Katia Kabanova. How could she not feel stifled, trapped between an apathetic husband and a tyrannical mother-in-law? Believing she can satisfy her longing for the absolute in the arms of another man, Katia soon discovers that the sting of remorse will drive her toward a tragic fate. 

Katia Kabanova

Palais Garnier

The biblical episode is well known: during a banquet, Princess Salome dances for Herod and he promises her anything in return; the young woman asks for and obtains the head of John the Baptist. In 1891, Oscar Wilde turned the story into a drama, enriched with new elements, which enjoyed great success in Germany and consolidated the image of Salome as a combination of innocence and perversion. Richard Strauss, in search of a subject for a new opera, did not let it slip away and set Wilde’s text (translated into German) to music as it stood, with only minor changes.

Tenor

John Daszak

Events

Upcoming events

Nov 22 - Dec 16, 2026

Elektra · Opernhaus Zürich

Jan 27 - Feb 13, 2027

Katia Kabanova · Opéra national de Paris

6 - 17 Apr, 2027

Salome · Teatro Regio Torino

Past events

May 29 - Jun 15, 2025

Salome · Opernhaus Zürich

Mar 17 - Jul 7, 2025

Káťa Kabanová · Bayerische Staatsoper

Future and recently performed repertoire

Aegisth in Elektra by Strauss

Staatsoper Hamburg

Erode in Salome by Strauss

Teatro Regio Torino

Aegisthus in Elektra by Strauss

Opernhaus Zürich

Tichon Kabanov in Katia Kabanova by Janáček

Opéra national de Paris

About

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