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The Salome scandals of 1907.

Article Excerpt
We don't know exactly what it was that horrified Mrs. Herbert Satterlee at the final rehearsal of Richard Strauss's Salome at the Metropolitan Opera House, after church on Sunday afternoon, January 20, 1907. She never explained it in any form that has come down to us. She probably did not attend the premiere the following Tuesday night, after which the Met announced three further non-subscription performances, all of them quickly sold out. We do know, however, that after attending the Sunday dress rehearsal, she went in fury to her father. Her father was J. P. Morgan.

Morgan was a member of the board of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company, and he summoned a special meeting for the earliest possible date, Wednesday, January 23. The minutes are regrettably discreet; they do not detail the arguments brought forward for or against the final resolution--only what that resolution was. Heinrich Conried, general manager of the opera company that managed the Real Estate Company's flagship property, was requested to cancel the three remaining performances of Salome. He was further enjoined from staging the opera anywhere else under the Met name. Morgan offered to reimburse Conried for the sets and costumes, a sop Conried coldly refused. He could ill afford to do so--he had lost nineteen full productions the previous April in the earthquake that greeted the Metropolitan Opera visit to San Francisco and had had to rebuild them from scratch.

We do possess some of the correspondence that passed between Conried and the board. He pointed out that...

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