Olesya Golovneva as Salome and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner as Herodias in a new production of "Salome" at the Grand Théâtre de Genève

OLESYA GOLOVNEVA as Salome and TANJA ARIANE BAUMGARTNER as Herodias in a new production of Salome at the Grand Theatre de Genève.

PREMIERE on 22nd January 2025

FURTHER PERFORMANCES on 25th/27th/29th/31st January - 2nd February

“Hungarian theatre and film director Kornél Mundruczó here continues his partnership with the Grand Théâtre, after The Makropoulos Affair (2020), Peter Eötvös’s Sleepless (2022) and Christian Jost’s Journey to Hope (2023). In collaboration with Monika Korpa, designing sets and costumes, he sheds a contemporary light on Salomé that psychoanalysis wouldn’t disown. In lieu of the debauchery and power of a Galilean palace, the director will set the characters in the perverted luxury of a penthouse overlooking the skyline of an opulent Babylon. Herod’s family will be torn apart around its prey, a Jokanaan from ‘below’ whose very existence threatens their world view. All crowned with a touch of Buñuelian surrealism, via quirkily phantasmagoric tableaux.

Under the baton of Jukka-Pekka Saraste, the great Finnish conductor heard too seldom in opera, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande will be able to deploy the full force of Richard Strauss’s score. Possessing both the necessary power and Elfengesang fragility Strauss envisaged for the role, Olesya Golovneva will lend her rich timbre and upper-register transparency to Salomé. Opposite her is Gábor Bretz, who previously performed a masterful Jokanaan in Salzburg in 2018, in Roméo Castellucci’s production. Also featuring is Tanja Ariane Baumgartner as Herodias – a new excessive and monstrous mother figure, after her Clytemnestra in Elektra (2022).”

Source: Grand Theatre Genève