Salome (1895 Sylvestre, Pierné, Fuller), ballet
Salomé (1895) is a ballet, or "pantomime lyrique", by Armand Sylvestre [with Charles Henry Meltzer] (libr.), Gabriel Pierné (mus.), and Loie Fuller (chor.).
Abstract
Salomé (1895) was the first Salome piece ever performed. One year before the premiere of Oscar Wilde's play and ten years before Richard Strauss's opera, the authors could still ignore Salome's rising image as an "Oriental" femme fatale. Following the traditional "biblical" view, they presented her dressed in a white robe adorned with white roses, as "an innocent child who dances before Herod at the instigation of her mother. Salome does not ask for the head of John the Baptist and when it is delivered to her she falls to the ground in fright". By contrast, in her choreography for the 1907 Schmitt ballet, Fuller would use a completely different Salome image, not a biblical image, but an "Oriental" femme fatale, and would focus more on the technical and electrical aspects of the dance spectacle.
Original cast
Editions, performances
Premiered in Paris, France: Théâtre de l'Athénée, 4 March 1895 (closed 27 April 1895).