A provocative, guttural, and raw opera, Richard Strauss’ Salome evokes emotions that few can put a name to. This opera has repulsed and enthralled audiences for over a century since its debut performance in Dresden, Germany on December 9th 1905, but the storyline took on a new meaning at the Met Opera during the recent run of Salome from April 29th to May 24th, 2025, with the acclaimed German theater director Claus Guth in his Met Opera debut, exploring traumatic experiences, childhood abuses, and power plays.
Salome’s character originates in the New Testament of The Bible, where her story’s main focus is on her ultimate victim: John the Baptist. Within the short verse, Salome’s mother convinces her to ask King Herod–her stepfather–for the prophet’s head on a silver platter; Salome’s character itself is insignificant. In 1891, however, the Irish poet, critic, and playwright Oscar Wilde–fascinated with the short passage–created an erotic and murderous play in French, focused on King Herod, characterizing his stepdaughter Salome as a femme fatale. Wilde depicted her as shockingly lustful and obsessive. As Wilde wrote, “Her lust must needs be infinite, and her perversity without limits. Her pearls must expire on her flesh.”
Strauss viewed a German language version of Wilde’s production at the Kleines Theater in Berlin, in 1902; inspired, Strauss immediately set to work on a German opera rendition. His production would focus on Salome and her sexual perversion. Interestingly, Strauss chose to preserve the Wilde-Lachmann text verbatim, without using a librettist–a daring choice for such a provocative production, as Wilde had been put on trial for sexual indecency not a decade prior.
To that end, Strauss’ final creation was a definitive departure from traditionalism. At the time, sexuality in art forms as haughty as opera was a relatively new concept, and a depiction of female sexuality was simply unheard of. Instead of reinforcing the patriarchy, as musicologist Peter Franklin writes, Strauss permitted “an alternative discourse of pleasure and experience whose actually transgressive nature was defined by the female subject.”
In 1905, three years after Strauss began his work, Salome would premier in Dresden, Germany to mixed reactions. Some found it thrilling, regarding it as a symbol of the sexual revolution, but others thought it utterly blasphemous. Kaiser Wilhelm II, the German Emperor and King of Prussia, noted at the time, “I am sorry that Strauss composed this Salome. Normally I’m very keen on him, but this is going to do him a lot of damage.” In London, England, following the same sentiment, the production would be banned until 1907. That very year, Salome would also premiere at the Met Opera in New York and consequently be banned from future performances, with a critic stating that the story was “repugnant to Anglo-Saxon minds.”
At the Met Opera’s recent production in April and May 2025, however, Salome is no longer depicted as the salacious femme fatale that she used to be. Instead, Claus Guth’s production explores themes of sexual assault and Salome’s responses to that trauma, portraying her fragmented psyche through fleeting glances of her past selves. Guth, the director of the production, drew inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s horror film Eyes Wide Shut, in which sensual activities happen under the cover of night, giving Salome’s story a haunting aftertaste. “Sexuality happens unseen, in a different room,” Guth noted.
Guth also considered historical circumstances, wanting to place Salome’s story in a timeframe which made sense for an updated production so indicative of the sexual revolution. “With Salome, it is extremely important to consider the time in which it was created,” he said. “Sometimes history goes on in a normal, slow rhythm for a long time, and then suddenly there is a moment when everything seems to explode, when time accelerates, and art veers off in many directions.” The twentieth century marked such a period, with Europe casting out the repressive Victorian era with rapid social change. As such, Guth chose to make the palace set during the Victorian period, but completely black; this is Guth’s effort to combine his historical and haunting inspirations.
Synopsis
The chandeliers at the Met rise amidst an eerie silence; the conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin does not make his customary grand entrance. Instead, the curtain rises to a projection–a young girl, almost ghost-like, twirls on the screen, her movements slow and wispy. A music box begins to twinkle. Below the projection is the physical girl herself, young Salome. She lays on her stomach, kicking her feet while holding a doll.
She rips a limb off of it.
Many in the upper balconies cannot see at first, but she tears off another. Then another. Then swiftly, without a hint of hesitation, the girl begins to slam the doll against the floor. As plastic collides with wood, an uncomfortable air fills the room; audience members look to each other in shock. After she is done, she rises and runs offstage.
The sense of uneasiness in the opening minutes isn’t diminished in the following scenes. Almost immediately after Salome’s exit, male figures in animal masks grace the stage, dancing seductively with a masked female figure in the nude. Their presence signifies animalistic impulses and desires. Throughout their stage time, the power dynamic between the male figures and the sole female figure shifts dramatically–sometimes, she is lifted by a net of their hands, other times, she sits on their backs as they crawl on all fours. This play on dominance illustrates the relationship between Salome and the men she will interact with in the coming two hours and fifteen minutes.
While the figures continue their evocative number, a now-older Salome dances with a white veil. The Captain of the Guard of the castle, Narraboth, is infatuated with her and cannot avert his eyes. Salome knows this, and she takes advantage of it to get what she wants; she wishes to go into the cistern, where a prophet named Jochanaan is kept prisoner. To convince Narraboth to open the door to the cistern, she taunts him, luring him into provocative positions. He relents, and descends with her into the cistern.
After meeting Jochanaan, Salome is obsessed. “I’m certain he’s as chaste as the moon,” she sings happily. “I’m in love with your body.” But he rejects her advances–telling her to seek Christ and repent for her incestuous mother’s sins (Salome’s mother had divorced her husband to marry his brother, an act deemed scandalous by Jewish law). Upon hearing this, Salome’s once-affectionate demeanor turns cold and vicious. “Your body is horrible!” she screeches. Evidently, she is unaccustomed to rejection. Meanwhile, Narraboth finally realizes his unreciprocated love and stabs himself with his sword. Salome doesn’t blink an eye.
When she finally ascends from the cistern, Salome seems to go manic. Dancing wildly around an idol, she laughs and talks to herself, breaking the fourth wall as she puts a finger on her lips to tell the audience to keep a secret. This secret is soon revealed–Salome’s stepfather, King Herod, appears, and his intentions are blatantly lustful. “Dance for me,” he repeatedly tells Salome.
Suddenly, in what the audience perceives as a flashback, young Salome darts across the stage, a goat-headed figure in pursuit. Goat heads have long been associated with the devil; here, they represent the sin of lust. Both girl and goat run off the stage, but soon young Salome reappears; she holds the stockings that had just been on her legs. As she shakes, older Salome tries to help her put them on. The connotation of this scene is clear–Herod’s eye has been on Salome for years, and she has sustained trauma through it.
After Herod engages in a multitude of religious debates with a multitude of drunken men (ironic and somewhat sarcastic, yes), Salome finally agrees to dance for Herod–but on the condition that she will receive her heart’s desire upon completion. This will be the Dance of Seven Veils, a trademark of Salome’s story, invented by Oscar Wilde in his play and kept by Strauss in his operatic adaptation. In almost every rendition including Wilde’s, this dance has been seductive, with Salome removing seven veils from her body until she is almost naked; it has often been called a striptease.
But not in this production. Now, the seven veils are seven girls.
The Dance of the Seven Veils
Butlers with small protruding devil horns enter to robe Salome. As Herod watches, he dons a goat-head; a second goat-headed figure enters, who is implied to be Herod in the preceding years.
The seven parts of the dance unfold as follows:
1 – In a gut-wrenching and heartbreaking recognition, the young Salome from the beginning of the production glides onstage. She dances as the goat-head watches on. As quickly as the young girl comes, she is gone.
2 – The second Salome appears, a few years older than the one prior. She is visibly nervous, and runs off in tears a minute later.
3 – The third Salome appears, and dances with a childlike grace. Her form, however, does not satisfy the goat-head, who almost strikes her. She flinches.
4 – When the next Salome appears, she makes no mistake in her form. The goat-head is satisfied.
5 – Another Salome appears, and the goat-head is more clear in his intentions. It lusts after her, bending her to his will; she scampers away in fear.
6 – The goat-head rises to dance with the incoming Salome, yet she resists. But she can no longer leave; as she struggles to break free of his grip, he lifts her into his arms.
7 – The older Salome, who had been standing in wait, finally intervenes. Leading the sixth Salome to safety, she prowls around the goat-head; she is the one who holds the power in this interaction. As the music reaches its climax, she drives a stick into its heart.
These seven flashes of Salome as she ages show the audience–in an uncomfortable, eerie fashion–how she became the femme fatale figure she is known as today. A dramatic showcase of the loss of childhood innocence, this once seductive number is now, as music critic Zachary Woolfe for The New York Times writes, “defiantly unsexy.”
The dance is done, and Salome’s reward must be granted. Herod embraces her joyfully, offering her gold, luxuries, even half of his kingdom. But she is absolute in her desire. “The head of Jochanaan,” she declares. Strauss’ score, both beautiful and brutal, utilizes heavy brass, swirling strings and shrill woodwinds, capturing the horrifying essence of her want. Herod tries to persuade her otherwise, but she is definitive in her decision; in a moment of resolve, she smashes a goat-head statue to the left of the stage, symbolizing her rejection of Herod’s dominance. He eventually relents, agreeing to grant her Jochanaan’s head on a silver platter.
Drums pound as Salome descends once more into the cistern. The younger versions of her from the Dance of Seven Veils are already sitting in the room, bent in eerie positions. The decapitated body of Jochanaan sits on a chair, bloodied and chained. A young version of Salome carries his head to older Salome, who is ecstatic. “I will bite thy mouth like a ripe fruit,” she declares to the severed head. The audience has a harrowing moment of recognition–Herod had said almost the same thing to Salome just scenes before. The inheritance of her trauma, with this line, is solidified.
Salome sings to the ghastly head. Her tone is light and beautiful, contrasting with her sarcastic and guttural proclamations. “I know you would have loved me!” What follows is often considered the most abhorrent part of the production. She embraces the head, kissing it passionately and smearing blood upon her face. “I have kissed your mouth, Jochanaan!”
Eventually, a bloody Salome rises out of the cistern. Around her, guards lie unconscious. “Kill that woman!” a disgusted Herod shrieks before collapsing. The only figure left standing is Salome’s sinful, incestuous mother. The orchestra delivers a cataclysmic final chord, almost a melody of final judgment. Under a projection of the moon, Salome numbly turns and walks away, leaving behind her six younger versions. She does not look back, marking her unwavering departure from this world and the agony it has inflicted onto her.
During the Met Opera’s recent production, South African soprano Elza van den Heever played Salome–an extremely demanding role, which she embodied almost perfectly, capturing the underlying trauma that plagues her character. What she lacks in the lower vocal ranges, she makes up for with her sarcastic characterization and exaggerated facial expressions, giving Salome a unique flare. Baritone Peter Mattei as Jochanaan was another exemplary choice, his beautiful tone reminiscent of holy entities and church choirs. Gerhard Siegel played King Herod, a good choice, although some phrases were more spoken than sung. This spoken, drawling tone was more fitting for mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, who played the wife Herodias. Her character was often drunk, and DeYoung’s exaggerations sold the act.
Meanwhile, Strauss’ score is masterful. Calling for a late-Romantic orchestra of over one hundred instruments, each scene has its own thematic undertones embedded within the notes. When the character of Salome sings, Strauss has seductive and slithering melodies to accompany her, while Jochanaan the prophet has brass-heavy and modal harmonies to convey his holy righteousness. These melodies often cumulate at the climaxes of the production, notably the Dance of Seven Veils and Salome’s final monologue, with a mix of dramatic baselines and twinkling winds at the top. Sensual instruments, such as the harp, evoke a beautiful tone, yet are haunting when combined with the rest of the score. Strauss’ musical genius is not lost in the slightest within Salome; his choices echo the themes explored in Guth’s modern interpretation.
A far cry from its Biblical origins, Strauss’ Salome is a story to be taken in many ways. She is the epitome of lust, a traumatized teenager, a destroyer of her own reality. But as the orchestra descends into earth-splitting dissonance, Salome’s story ends in one simple way: terrifyingly triumphant. We, the audience, emerge utterly shaken.
A far cry from its Biblical origins, Strauss’ Salome is a story to be taken in many ways. She is the epitome of lust, a traumatized teenager, a destroyer of her own reality. But as the orchestra descends into earth-splitting dissonance, Salome’s story ends in one simple way: terrifyingly triumphant. We, the audience, emerge utterly shaken.