Lyric Opera 2025-2026 Issue 8 - Salome

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 10 Lyric’s first Salome, in 1956, was Inge Borkh, a ravishing German soprano whose experience included training as an actress and a dancer as well as Sieglinde in Bayreuth, Beethoven’s Leonore in Edinburgh, and Elektra in San Francisco. Borkh’s glamorous, athletic, full-voiced Salome established the Lyric tradition of casting singers who meet the dramatic as well as the vocal demands of the role. American soprano Felicia Weathers, whose Salome opened Lyric’s 1968 season, told local broadcaster Studs Terkel that she had sung the role in more than a dozen productions before her Chicago performances, averring that whatever the Salome production scheme, she maintained her basic idea for the character — to be convincing as a young girl who “showed her youth and absolute innocence [while] she is a part of this corrupt society.” Weathers was succeeded as Salome at Lyric by four of 20th-century opera’s most celebrated singing actresses — Anja Silja (1971), Grace Bumbry (1978), Maria Ewing (1988/89), and Catherine Malfitano (1996/97). Lyric’s most recent exponent of Salome, Deborah Voigt, had what the New York Times ’s Anthony Tommasini called “a personal and artistic triumph” in Francesca Zambello’s striking new 2006 production. In her staged role debut as Salome, Voigt capped her reputation as one of the greatest Strauss interpreters of her era. The Salome at the work’s premiere, Marie Wittich, was 37 and at the peak of her vocal prowess when she created the title role at Dresden’s Konigliches Opernhaus. Already a veteran member of the Dresden ensemble at the time, Wittich counted several Wagner heroines among her successes there. Her vocal suitability for Salome was never seriously questioned, but Strauss was considerably less enthusiastic about the soprano’s stage presence. Wittich was a handsome woman, and a vibrant, intelligent singer, but she was neither slim nor lithe, much to the annoyance of Strauss, who referred to his Salome as “Tante” (Auntie). Wittich also opted not to perform Salome’s “Dance of the Seven Veils,” which was taken on by a ballerina from the Dresden company. This odd double-casting practice was also used when Salome had its 1907 U.S. premiere, at the Metropolitan Opera, which cast the magnificent Swedish- American diva Olive Fremstad, another formidable Wagnerian, as the princess and drafted company ballerina Bianca Froelich for the dance. The city of Chicago’s first Salome was the beautiful Scots prima donna Mary Garden, who made her debut in the role for Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera Company in 1909. Garden was a charismatic performer who gave full play to the opera’s dramatic possibilities, although critic James Gibbons Huneker termed her voice “a serious mirage.” Garden chose to perform Salome in French, executed the dance herself and — according to The New York Sun ’s critic W. J. Henderson — “deliberately spoke” rather than sang, several of Salome’s more taxing lines. When Garden’s Salome reached the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago in 1910, she caused a full-out scandal. The president of the Chicago Law and Order League wrote a furious (and well–publicized) letter to the Chief of Police, saying, “Miss Garden wallowed around like a cat in a bed of catnip…I would not call it immoral. I would say it From left: Marie Wittich (seen here as Siegelinde) sang the title role in the 1905 premiere in Dresden; Scottish soprano Mary Garden became Chicago’s first Salome,at the Auditorium Theatre in 1910; the German Inge Borkh sang the role in the Lyric premiere in 1956. Wikipedia Wikipedia