(credit: Jiyang Chen)

Bard College Conservatory Orchestra is set to perform a semi-staged rendition of Strauss’s famed “Salome” on April 3 and 5, 2020.

The work, which was written by Lachmann, will be directed by R. B. Schlather with Leon Botstein conducting the Bard Conservatory Orchestra.

Melody Moore will headline the production and will be joined by Jay Hunter Morris as Herod, Nathan Berg as Jochanaan, Betsy Bishop as Herodias, and Robert Stahley as Naraboth. Other cast members include Ricardo Lugo, Timothy Bruno, Ben Wager, Marc Molomet, Vincent Festa, Chauncey Parker, Paul An, and Paula La Rosa.

Students from the Conservatory’s Graduate Vocal Arts Program, including Hailey MacEvoy and Cody Ray Caho, will also appear in the performance.

“There was little doubt that the opera was a masterpiece, that its music was radically innovative, even ‘revolutionary,’ but many were profoundly disturbed by the image of Salome kissing the severed head of John the Baptist on the mouth,” Bard Visiting Associate Professor of Music Peter Laki wrote in a press release. “The opera certainly stands with Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring,’ which followed eight years later, at the threshold of a new era. It did away with many old taboos and presented human situations and emotions in a way they had never been presented before.  Strauss made an old story breathtakingly new, boldly confronting the dark sides of the human psyche.”