Loaded with polyphony and dissonance, Strauss’ score was in many ways as taboo-shattering as the content onstage. Houston Grand Opera's 'Salome' Michael Bishop Newspapers did not flinch in condemning “the moral stench with which ‘Salome’ fills the nostrils of mankind,” according to one gimlet-eyed account. New Yorker music critic Alex Ross opens his essential 2007 book “The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century” with a fascinating account of the multi-city “Salome” premiere tour: beloved in Dresden, Graz, and most of Europe but censored in Vienna and scorned at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, where it was subsequently banned for nearly 30 years. In a very real way, Strauss’ opera, which returns to HGO April 28-May 12, set the tone for the contentious and unruly musical century to come. The company’s audience understands “we’re not going to feel comfortable with everything that’s produced on the stage at our home opera company: that part of our essential role is to provoke and push the boundaries, perhaps even of decency, even of morality, if it leaves us with a deeper understanding of our own imperfect selves.” “I think that choice has really set the company on the path that we find ourselves today,” says HGO general director and CEO Khori Dastoor.
TERRIFIC 'TOSCA': Chris Gray says Tamara Wilson is absolutely fantastic in the HGO production/
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