Many years before Richard Strauss composed his opera on the subject of Salome and John the Baptist, Jules Massenet had explored the same relationship in Hérodiade. However, in Massenet’s opera it is the vengeful Hérodiade, Salomé’s mother, who demands John the Baptist’s head, not her naïve, innocent daughter. The opera’s lyrical inwardness focuses on the characters’ most intimate feelings in a way that had not been heard before and was considered radical at the time.

‘It’s not often in Verdi that the conductor deserves pride of place. Enrique Mazzola goes beyond the usual niceties of Italianate style and focuses on the tautness of the drama to an exceptional degree, breathtakingly intense in some of the quietest passages’ wrote The Financial Times.

Gramophone wrote of soprano Nicole Car that ‘She possesses a lovely lyric soprano… full of dewy freshness, nowhere more so than in Mimì’s aria, where the voice has a rosy bloom’.

‘Few singers today command the sheer beauty of timbre and dynamic control of Matthew Polenzani… almost impossibly beautiful pianissimo’ – Opera News

Of Massenet’s Werther at the Vienna State Opera, Online Merker, the international cultural platform wrote that ‘Clémentine Margaine thus becomes the vocal centre of the opera evening and, thanks to her impressive presence, clearly has the upper hand. Her emotionally performed tearful aria “Air de larmes” a melancholic slow waltz, does not fail to have its effect’.

Cast:
- Hérode: Etienne Dupuis (baritone)
- Hérodiade: Clémentine Margaine (mezzo-soprano)
- Salomé: Nicole Car (soprano)
- Jean: Matthew Polenzani (tenor)
- Phanuel: Marko Mimica (bass-baritone)
- Vitellius: Dean Murphy (baritone)
- A High Priest: Kyle Miller (baritone)
- A Voice: Thomas Cilluffo (tenor)
- A Young Babylonian: Sua Jo (soprano)