Music: Banned by Boston

Mayor James M. Curley of Boston announced that the Chicago Opera Company will not be permitted to perform Strauss’ Salome in Boston during the coming season. This reaffirms a decision which forebade the giving of Salome a year ago.

The opera (a play by Wilde, set to music by Richard Strauss) is said to be “a danger to public morals.” The Strauss score, though, has had, in other cities, small public appeal. It is a true masterpiece, but one of recondite perplexities. It moves only persons of considerable musical culture, folk whose morals (generally speaking) are not in need of any spoiling. The lyrics of the play, in French, are understood by few, and are in addition not half so lascivious or persuasive as the text of the average A. H. Woods farce. The operatic pantomime, when well done, evokes a scholarly mood and more estheticism than erotic thrills. The scene of the head is moderately horrible after the fashion of the traditional Grand Guignol, but is certainly not of a sort to lead bashful youth astray. Mary Garden’s stilted dance might be witnessed by the frailest virtue without danger.