PRESS RELEASE
WAITING FOR
“SALOME”
Palermo, May 8 2025. On Friday 9 May at 6 pm at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo (Sala ONU), musicologist Ilaria Grippaudo will talk about Salome, a masterpiece by Bavarian composer Richard Strauss. The listening introduction meeting, organised by the Association Amici del Teatro Massimo, precedes the debut of the opera, based on Oscar Wilde’s play, which will be back on stage at the Teatro Massimo from 20 to 27 May, twenty years after the last production. On the podium of the Teatro Massimo Orchestra will be maestro Gaetano d’Espinosa, while the staging, from the Irish National Opera, features direction by Bruno Ravella, sets and costumes by Leslie Travers, choreographic movements by Liz Roche, and lighting by Malcom Rippeth. The main performers include soprano Astrid Kessler as Salome, tenor Charles Workman as Herod, Anna Maria Chiuri as Herodias, Tommi Hakala as the prophet Jochanaan and Ewandro Stenzowski as Narraboth.
This is a free event in Italian.
Ilaria Grippaudo is a researcher at the University of Palermo. In 2010, she received her PhD in musicology from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. She teaches History of Music in the Humanities degree course and was a research fellow at the University of Palermo (2013-2017). Her research interests cover a broad spectrum of topics ranging from musical life in Sicily to the history of opera and the study of music in women’s monasteries. She has published numerous articles, both in Italian and in other languages, in international scientific journals. In 2014, she was the winner of the biennial “Pier Luigi Gaiatto” Prize instituted by the Levi Foundation in Venice, which later merged into the monograph published by Olschki in 2022, Musica e devozione nella ‘Città Felicissima’. Ordini religiosi e pratiche sonore a Palermo tra Cinque e Seicento.
Press Office
Fondazione Teatro Massimo
Giovannella Brancato
stampa@teatromassimo.it