In King Herod’s lurid fantasies, lust has no boundaries and desire no limits.
Even his own stepdaughter tempts him, taunts him: Salome, the virgin seductress, an innocent with a taste for blood.
Richard Strauss’ taboo-breaking opera strips back Oscar Wilde’s play to its core: a gripping journey to the outer edges of human behaviour.
The music is at once ravishing and repellent. Strauss augments an enormous orchestra with organ, harps and celestas. The effect is a web of exotic melodies, enticing rhythms and intriguing dissonance, famously on display in the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’.
Lise Lindstrom sings the title role in this revival of a Gale Edwards-directed production. Andreas Conrad is Herod, Jacqueline Dark Herodias and Alexander Krasnov Jokanaan.
