At the Festival d'art lyrique d'Aix-en-Provence (July 4-23), the German director Andrea Breth presents from Tuesday her version of the opera by Richard Strauss, a success since its creation in 1905, which continues to fascinate for its music, its gore side and its dance of the seven veils.

The 31-year-old Franco-Danish soprano lends her youthful features to Salomé who, in the original libretto, taken from the eponymous play by Oscar Wilde, is a teenager.

The princess, coveted by her stepfather Herod and herself obsessed with the prophet Jochanaan (John the Baptist), is indeed 16 years old.

"It's not a role that you usually give to a 30-year-old singer but rather (to a soprano) at the peak of her career, so rather late thirties," says Elsa Dreisig in an interview with the AFP.

"But she's a teenager, and Andrea (Breth) felt that the story couldn't work with an older soprano. As for me, I accepted to be in this project because from the start, I I was aware that Salomé was not a femme fatale and that she is rather fantasized by the men around her", she adds.

Teenager but not innocent since Salome, repelled in her advances by the imprisoned prophet, takes advantage of Herod asking her to dance for him so that she demands the head of Jochanaan... whom she kisses once beheaded.

"I don't want to make Salomé neither victim nor guilty... neither pure nor completely psychopathic. It's very complicated to play but that's why the character fascinates", specifies Elsa Dreisig.

Franco-Danish soprano Elsa Dreisig, June 22, 2022 in Aix-en-Provence Nicolas TUCAT AFP / Archives

fantasy dance

Unlike other female characters in the lyrical repertoire - ingenuous, seductive, victims - "she puts us face to face with feelings that we are not used to feeling in opera", continues the singer .

"She is completely uncompromising, while all the other characters I have sung, they always accept compromises", underlines the soprano, who sang in "La Traviata", "Don Giovanni", "The Puritans", "Cosi fan tutte" and more recently "Anna Bolena".

She compares Salomé to teenagers who grow up without codes or authority, which can push them to extremes.

"She was born into an environment that gave her no values, no ethics, no love. Her mother Herodias is a pervert who only thinks of money and fame and uses her daughter for her own ends, while that her stepfather looks at her too much“, continues Elsa Dreisig.

A young girl therefore caught in a gear, rather than the sulphurous seductress long fantasized, especially by male directors.

"There were a lot of fantasies around the dance of the seven veils", maintains Elsa Dreisig, in reference to the stagings where Salomé ends her dance either scantily dressed or completely naked.

"Salome is attractive of course, but she's like those teenagers on the street. There's a man watching their bodies while they're just walking," says the singer.

Despite the complexity of the role, Elsa Dreisig says she "likes the risk".

"I like to venture into roles that are like Holy Grails. But I take my time rehearsing, I don't like feeling like I'm running after my voice!"

© 2022 AFP