Salome (1895 Sylvestre, Pierné, Fuller), ballet
Salome (1895) is a ballet by Loie Fuller (chor.).
1895: Salomé, pantomime lyrique, by Charles Henry Meltzer and Armand Sylvestre, music by Gabriel Pierné, Théâtre de l'Athénée, 4 March
Abstract
Loie Fuller was the first solo dancer to present a Salome piece. In 1895, one year before the first performance of Oscar Wilde's play and ten years before Richard Strauss's opera, she could still ignore Salome's rising image as an "Oriental" femme fatale. Following the traditional "biblical" view, she 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, for the 1907 version, 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