Salome

by Oscar Wilde

Written in November-December 1891 in Paris and dedicated to Pierre Louys.

“What a fascinating period for anyone who wants to make predictions about how the emerging theater is going to end up. Music and prose are increasingly intertwined, especially where there are new ideas and working methods… I am calling attention to these performances at the Arsenale because they are significant for those who want to see the birth of a new theater, in which the signs are proliferating; in which the text provokes fantasies of dance and music, almost to the point of being submerged by them but remaining a fundamental structure, almost a libretto: perhaps the opera of the future, instead of being born in opera houses, will end up coming out of these small stages […].”(Lorenzo Arruga)

“[…] Oscar Wilde’s Salome is being staged with the contribution of a curious international company […]. The little Babel in question is located in a garden that winks a great deal at atmospheres of a wholly 20th-century “dolce vita,” but without overlapping too far with a modern cosmopolitan salon: a melting pot of peoples and cultures, where the incomprehensible voice of the Baptist brings a strange surge of menacing and disquieting anachronism […].” (Renato Palazzi)