Summary: 10/11/12---With David Rodes, Director Emeritus, The Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts. The Irish writer and wit Oscar Wilde and his friend the French actress Sarah Bernhardt were two of the most famous celebrities of late 19th-century Europe. Their collaboration in the 1890s on the theatrical tragedy Salome was inspired by the shimmering painting by Gustave Moreau, but by the time the play had its premiere in Paris in 1896, Bernhardt cast as the young princess, was over 50 and Wilde was serving a two-year sentence for sodomy in an English prison. Nevertheless, as Wilde would assert, "Legend remains victorious in spite of history," and this program hopes to recapture the scandalous excitement of the play and its starring actress and imprisoned author. (Run Time 49 min.)
