SALOME
An Opera in One Act
by Richard Strauss
FINAL SCENE: Sung by Teresa Stratas
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Sunday, August 19, 2012
6 comments:
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I love how on several occasions, Salome's head position assumes/ mimics that of John's "heavenly gaze from the platter...
ReplyDeletePerhaps no taste is more "bitter" than unrequited love.
ReplyDeleteA desire for "intimacy" requires a descent into the realm of obscenity... but get too close, too intimate, then you pass through intimacy and into the realm of "disgust"... just as when in the moment saliva passes beyond one's lips, it is no longer merely saliva... it has become "spit".
ReplyDeleteWe can all swallow our own saliva... but once it has passed from mouth to glass, can you drink it then?
ReplyDeletePlato, "Philebus"
ReplyDeletePROTARCHUS: No one, Socrates, either awake or dreaming, ever saw or imagined mind or wisdom to be in aught unseemly, at any time, past, present, or future.
SOCRATES: Right.
PROTARCHUS: But when we see some one indulging in pleasures, perhaps in the greatest of pleasures, the ridiculous or disgraceful nature of the action makes us ashamed; and so we put them out of sight, and consign them to darkness, under the idea that they ought not to meet the eye of day.
SOCRATES: Then, Protarchus, you will proclaim everywhere, by word of mouth to this company, and by messengers bearing the tidings far and wide, that pleasure is not the first of possessions, nor yet the second, but that in measure, and the mean, and the suitable, and the like, the eternal nature has been found.
PROTARCHUS: Yes, that seems to be the result of what has been now said.
SOCRATES: In the second class is contained the symmetrical and beautiful and perfect or sufficient, and all which are of that family.
PROTARCHUS: True.
SOCRATES: And if you reckon in the third class mind and wisdom, you will not be far wrong, if I divine aright.
PROTARCHUS: I dare say.
SOCRATES: And would you not put in the fourth class the goods which we were affirming to appertain specially to the soul—sciences and arts and true opinions as we called them? These come after the third class, and form the fourth, as they are certainly more akin to good than pleasure is.
PROTARCHUS: Surely.
SOCRATES: The fifth class are the pleasures which were defined by us as painless, being the pure pleasures of the soul herself, as we termed them, which accompany, some the sciences, and some the senses.
PROTARCHUS: Perhaps.
SOCRATES: And now, as Orpheus says,
'With the sixth generation cease the glory of my song.'
Here, at the sixth award, let us make an end; all that remains is to set the crown on our discourse.
PROTARCHUS: True.
Thank you for participating, Thersites.
ReplyDeleteThat something as magnificent and finely wrought as this is almost totally ignored while many prefer to rage on spilling their guts over relatively trivial matters speaks poorly for public taste specifically, and human nature in general, doesn't it?
(SIGH!)
~ FT