[Met Performance] CID:235020



Salome
Metropolitan Opera House, Wed, September 19, 1973

Debut : Romayne Grigorova, Arthur Mitchell




Salome (90)
Richard Strauss | Oscar Wilde
Salome
Grace Bumbry

Herod
Robert Nagy

Herodias
Regina Resnik

Jochanaan
Norman Mittelmann

Narraboth
William Lewis

Page
Batyah Godfrey Ben-David

Jew
Charles Anthony

Jew
Andrea Velis

Jew
Gabor Carelli

Jew
Paul Franke

Jew
Richard Best

Nazarene
John Macurdy

Nazarene
Robert Goodloe

Soldier
Edmond Karlsrud

Soldier
Andrij Dobriansky

Cappadocian
Russell Christopher

Slave
Robert Schmorr

Mannassah
Gilbert Ireland


Conductor
James Levine


Production
G?nther Rennert

Designer
Rudolf Heinrich

Choreographer
Romayne Grigorova [Debut]

Choreographer
Arthur Mitchell [Debut]

Stage Director
Bodo Igesz





Salome received ten performances this season.
Beginning with this appearance and for the next three seasons, Grace Bumbry was listed in company programs as Grace Melzia Bumbry. Arthur Mitchell choreographed the Dance of the Seven Veils.

Review 1:

Review of Louis Snyder in The Christian Science Monitor

As the third opera of its [first] week, the Metropolitan brought "Salome" back again with Grace Bumbry singing the title role for the first time here.

Visually, Miss Bumbry is one of the most successful Salomes to have done the role in recent Met history. She is short of stature, beautiful of face, and moves with an appropriately feline grace. Her approach to the part is not the eel-like, sinuous one-this is a thinking rather than a slinking princess-and she conveys through her acting a visible transition from obsessive puzzlement to angry frustration at her rejection by the prophet Jokanaan.

Vocally Miss Bumbry, who has been venturing from the mezzo into the soprano repertory of late, did a compelling job, if indeed her higher register was frequently taxed to the extreme. Much of its natural mellowness is sacrificed in the contention with Straussian instrumentation, and this, of course, is where the Salomes with bigger voices (and stronger frames) have the advantage. At the evening's end, her rewards in acclaim were ovation-size.

Conducting the opera here for the first time, the Met's principal conductor, James Levine, did what he had done for Verdi's "II Trovatore" on [the season's first] night-washed its musical face sparkling clean. The orchestra sang and sighed, shrieked and groaned, in an oceanic wash of dynamically gauged sound. It would take some thinking back to recall when this score has been so freshly approached.



Search by season: 1973-74

Search by title: Salome,



Met careers