Salome – It’s this incredibly rich, powerful and erotic music that makes people think, “Oh, this isn’t the same Richard Strauss who wrote Der Rosenkavalier and Ariadne auf Naxos.  But, in fact, the instant you listen to it, you find that tons of Rosenkavalier is in there.  This is a big, aggressive story but, even in the dance (of the Seven Veils) itself, there is this wonderful, swelling string writing that listeners would know from Der Rosenkavalier, applied to a much more dramatic story.

Oscar Wilde wrote his stage play of Salome in French – deliberately choosing not to write it in English – while he was living in Paris.  That choice owes something to Wilde’s view of the world; he wanted to write something very strange, not an historical drama.  In fact, he said during rehearsals for the play that the main character isn’t the girl at all, it’s the moon.  The whole opera is about strange, symbolic, surreal things that fill the art and literature of that time.

When Strauss picked up on the story to turn it into an opera, it was Wilde’s play that caught his interest, as it took Berlin (and everywhere else) by storm.

Apparently, it’s the most performed Anglo-Irish play, apart from Shakespeare, in Germany.  And that’s been the case from the moment it appeared.  Wilde’s Salome was hugely influential on the Continent and was banned for ages in England.  So, Strauss wasn’t simply interested in telling a Biblical tale, it was Wilde’s strange, surreal treatment that served as his inspiration for an incredibly powerful, erotic drama about this girl, Salome, and her obsession with John the Baptist (or Jokanaan, as he is called in this opera).

As for the question of how you set it: We are in Jerusalem, but it’s a very theatrical setting and telling of the story and the aesthetic we’ve gone for is one that coincides with the period of the music rather than the period of the tale.  We’re not deliberately making a big point about that but it’s 1900, 1910...blurring towards 1920, that general period.

The style of the musical language is incredibly rich; there’s this huge orchestra making these huge sounds (and delicate filigrees) of the late Romantic Period.  That chimes in synch with the visual arts of the period.  Our two big reference points for that, visually speaking, are Gustav Klimt, the Austrian painter, using very rich colors, incredibly dense, full, over-complex fabrics.  All of the women in Klimt (and he was obsessed with painting women) show this incredible ambiguity, combining the innocence of young womanhood with an intuitive knowledge of the potential seductress within.  Salome, as a character, sits precisely on that dividing line.  She’s living in this corrupt court ruled by King Herod, married to her mother Herodias, who happens to be his brother’s widow, and all sorts of people from neighboring countries are enjoying these wild, orgiastic parties.  Although she’s grown up in that corrupt environment, she doesn’t feel at home in it.  And, although she’s obviously a very passionate and erotic young woman, the impression we have is that she hasn’t had lots of love affairs; she’s never found anyone who’s man enough for her. 

So, you have a main character who – on the one hand – is hugely erotically charged and ready for love, but who recognizes that all these courtiers are much too weak and stupid and evil, and she has a tremendous disdain for them. 

However, locked up in the palace is John the Baptist, who is this extraordinarily direct, authentic, powerful, religious, inspired prophet; and Salome becomes obsessed with him.  Although they are complete opposites, it’s almost as if they sense in one another the same sort of extremism, manifested in different ways.

John the Baptist is profoundly spiritual, heralding the birth of Christ, who is completely committed to his mission and giving of himself 100 percent.  That gives him a tremendous force of personality because there’s none of the manipulative bull---t that goes on all around the court where stabbing in the back and jockeying for position is the norm.  This is one honest man in the midst of a ferociously corrupt society.

Although this means that there is absolutely no chance that Salome is going to be able to seduce him, she nevertheless senses that he is the kind of man she’s been waiting for and she sets about trying to achieve the impossible.

We don’t know Salome’s age – she might be sixteen or seventeen or eighteen – but she’s right on the cusp between girlishness and womanhood.  She obviously knows she’s beautiful; she knows she can have an affect on men but she doesn’t manipulate them with her charms the way an older woman (who’s had lots of lovers) might.

Salome knows a certain amount about what buttons to push and what strings to pull, and the effect she has when she walks into the room, but because she’s never experienced love, she doesn’t really understand what’s going on, even within herself.

When she goes to talk with Jokanaan, Salome begins to understand all these hidden things about to be unleashed within her and gets an inkling of who she could be, as an adult woman, if she survived that long.  When she is then challenged by Herod to dance for him, she does this huge dance that is the centerpiece of the opera, “The Dance of the Seven Veils.”  When it begins, the music shows us very clearly that she’s accomplished, she’s done this before, but now – because she has met Jokanaan and become obsessed by him – the dance itself begins to unlock these very powerful, raw emotions within her.  It’s almost like taking someone who’s been brought up in a convent and suddenly putting them in contact with an incredibly gorgeous, provocative man.  All sorts of things that have been locked up come to the surface, all at once.

In normal society, girls and boys get used to each other over a period of years and there’s a flirtatiousness, a gradual sexuality, that develops over a long period.  Imagine someone who had damned all that stuff, all her life; it becomes an avalanche of emotion.  It’s as if, within the dance, this avalanche of adult eroticism, pours out of her.  In the beginning, she knows what to do and the dance is quite controlled but, by the end, it’s become a kind of apoplectic frenzy.  The music takes her over, as though she were one possessed, and everyone around her is shocked and amazed.  It’s not a question of “How naked does she get?”  It’s this kind of animal force that’s completely “off the scale” as she breaks through these inner boundaries. 

There’s something quite tasteless about the way Herod, who is her step-father, lusts after Salome.  He wants her to dance because he gets a voyeuristic thrill out of it.  But, it’s as if she trumps that with this intense dance that is miles further than even the members of this corrupt court are willing to go. 

Herod has promised her whatever she wants, if she will dance for him.  When she completes this amazing dance, she asks for the head of John the Baptist and will be not dissuaded by offers of jewels and palaces.

But something else has happened in the dance: Salome realizes in her obsession with Jokanaan, that he is the only person in her life with a big enough presence, a big enough soul for her, yet she knows she can’t have him – he’s already turned her down.

Neither can she not have him, so she’s caught in this impossible situation.  She’s unleashed this erotic explosion knowing that the only man who can satisfy her is the one she cannot possess.  And it’s as if she decides that, she’ll have him – dead or alive.

Taken a step further, since she knows she can’t have him alive – she’ll have him dead, with the knowledge that she has dominated and controlled the relationship.

Herod is finally being forced to keep his promise.  The execution of the Baptist happens off-stage, in the cistern, and when the head is brought up, Salome takes it and triumphantly kisses it. 

Now, even those who thought the dance itself was beyond the pale realize this move is “off the scale” of acceptable human behavior, and Herod commands her to be killed.  Like the great, late-nineteenth century operas, this interweaving of love and sex also has a touch of death about it.  In operas like Tristan und Isolde, it’s very clear that if you have this ultimate erotic experience, which is the great dream of the Romantic Era, it’s a kind of death making it impossible to live a normal life.  There’s no logical reason Isolde has to die when Tristan dies but she does so because there’s nothing else to do.  She dies because, now that the only man she could ever love is dead, the only thing for her to do is join him. 

The same holds true for Salome.  Now that Jokanaan is dead, there’s nothing left for her but to die, as well.  She accepts her death sentence without any desire to escape it.

So, it’s a very dark, erotic story and one of those things that opera is supremely good at: expressing extreme emotions.  The music allows you to have this grand scale of emotions.  One of the reasons this is one of the very greatest operas ever is, the theme requires the audience to be drawn into, and carried along with, this huge wave of emotion which in a play or film would be incredibly hard to build.  But this unstoppable musical momentum (once it gets going) carries you along and makes you understand.

Most of us, in our lives, don’t dance erotic dances and execute the people we would like to go to bed with, but all of those feelings – in lesser ways – exist in all of us. 

Salome may be the most intense 90 minutes you’ve ever spent in the theater.