NMD26: Gerald Barry’s Salome with NSOI

National Symphony Orchestra Ireland
Jérôme Kuhn, conductor
Alison Scherzer, Salome
Amy Ní Fhearraigh, The Queen
Timur, The King
Vincent Casagrande, The Prisoner
Stefan Sevenich, The Young Syrian
David Howes, Soldier

Gerald Barry Salome (concert performance)  [Irish Premiere]

Two renowned Irish wits reunite for Gerald Barry’s ‘surreal and fantastical’ take on Oscar Wilde’s Salome in its Irish premiere with National Symphony Orchestra Ireland as part of New Music Dublin 2026.

Barry’s subversive libretto, vivid orchestral writing and biting vocal lines treats Wilde’s Biblical tragedy of corrupted sexual desire, power and grotesque beauty as thrilling, absurdist farce.

Barry describes Salome as ‘an opera of voyeurism, the moon, french, God, punishment of sin, misunderstanding, sex, the metronome, suicide, hysteria, hunger, blood, typing, speaking correctly, sterility, The Blue Danube, the wind, fever, art, Wilde, dreaming, beheading, Frankenstein, kissing’. 

Presented as part of New Music Dublin Festival, this unmissable concert performance features the world premiere cast including Alison Scherzer, ‘ideal as a brittle, unflinching Salome’ (Opera Now), and the ‘captivating’ (Arts Review) Amy Ní Fhearraigh as the Queen. Jérôme Kuhn again conducts with ‘energy and precision’ (Classica).

Salome is Barry’s second setting of Wilde, following the widely acclaimed The Importance of Being Earnest. It also belongs to the fantastical world of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, his imaginative take on the Lewis Carroll classic and shares its ‘same wit and subversion… madness, ecstasy, humour and murder’.

Reviewing Salome’s 2025 world premiere, Gramophone noted: ‘Barry’s distinctive, high-energy musical language transforms [Wilde’s] dark and scandalous drama into a whirlwind of absurdity, sharp wit, and gripping intensity’.

Opera Now described it as ‘a surreally decadent, absurdist world… it’s certainly a riot’.

New Music Dublin Festival 2026 takes place in NCH & other venues around Dublin from 16th to 19th April.  See newmusicdublin.ie  for full festival details in January 2026. 

Presented by New Music Dublin in partnership with the Arts Council, NCH & RTÉ.