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Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Massenet: Herodiade
Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:
This opera, which premiered in Brussels in 1881 with great success, is Massenet's take on the story of Salome, and while his source material is the same (Gustav Flaubert's 1877 novella), Massenet's musical treatment is completely different from the Salome opera of Richard Struass. Massenet's Herodiade went on to triumph in Paris in 1884 and elsewhere, but it fell out of the repertoire in the 1920's, then disappeared until the general revival of Jules Massenet's operas in the 1970's.
San Francisco Opera revived Herodiade in 1994. Valery Gergiev led the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus, with a stellar cast of the era. Soprano Renee Fleming tops the bill as Salome. John the Baptist is superstar tenor Placido Domingo. The recording of the SF Opera production came back into circulation in 2013 on two CD's courtesy of Newton Classics of the UK.