Who’s Afraid of Salome? A Biblical Drama that made Opera History

The Metropolitan Opera’s 2024-2025 season is filled with classics and beloved titles mixed with contemporary settings and newer stories. One title in particular has caught my eye: a brand new production of Richard Strauss’s Salome.

Bible scholars may recognize the name “Salome” from more than one context: One narrative depicts a follower of Jesus who was present at his crucifixion. Another narrative tells of a young princess’s role in the murder of John the Baptist. Characteristic qualities certainly place these two women apart, but the leading lady of Strauss’s opera takes her queues from the second of the set. Strauss even used the beautiful name, “Salome,” a feminine rendition of the word for “peace” in Hebrew, to title his work; however, the Bible never actually calls the princess by any name at all.

The character who centers Strauss’s opera comes from two records of the same account of John the Baptist’s death. Both Gospel writers Matthew and Mark wrote comparatively similar stories about Herod Antipas’s birthday celebration wherein his stepdaughter performed a dance that impressed him so much, he promised to grant the princess any one wish. It is written that the princess referred to her mother, Herodios, for advice and was told to request the head of John the Baptist, who had denounced Herodios’s marriage to Herod Antipas. In a gruesome conclusion, John the Baptist’s head was served to the princess on a silver platter, which she presented to her mother.

The decider of John the Baptist’s fate, though depicted as an unfortunate villain who simply sought to fulfill her mother’s wishes, was named “Salome” according to the historical accounts of a military leader named Flavius Josephus, who wrote records of political affairs during the first century in a twenty-volume work called, “The Antiquities of the Jews.” Not all of Josephus’s records have been entirely trusted over the centuries, but, nonetheless, Salome’s name seems to have stuck.

As artists and visionaries around the world have taken closer analyses of the famous heroes and infamous sinners of the Bible’s stories, Salome’s character has collected a variety of interpretations and undergone vivid transformations that portray her as a frightful villain. From Renaissance paintings to contemporary performance arts, the mind and motives of an unnamed princess have taken on a unique set of expressions over the years.

Oscar Wilde wrote his rendition of the fateful tale in the late 1800s through a one-act play that became the basis of Richard Strauss’s libretto for his opera, Salome. The script was translated by Hedwig Lachmann with edits from Strauss to complete his German composition.

What sets Oscar Wilde’s and later Richard Strauss’s story of Salome apart from its Biblical roots and led to a mix of audience receptions over the years of its performances is its unique artistic interpretation of the emotions in Salome’s heart and the frenzied motives in her mind.

If you truly want to know what all the buzz is about, just look up a performance of the “Dance of the Seven Veils” on Youtube. The Bible does not state what kind of dance Herod Antipas’s stepdaughter performed or why he was so entranced by it. The princess may have enacted a commonly known cultural performance with great skill, but Strauss’s opera often inspires productions to create a more sensual atmosphere led by Salome’s artistically seductive movements.

Instead of being simply the dutiful daughter of Herodios, Strauss’s Salome is driven by her own feelings toward the famous and divinely blessed John the Baptist, who rejects her advances. The strategized power she attains by drawing the attention and interest of Herod Antipas allows her to take bloody revenge.

The expansion of Salome’s agency as a character as well as the twist in her relationship with the famed holy man she orders to be killed turns a loyal daughter into a feared royal worthy of operatic drama. Paired with passionate musicality and the intense orchestration of Richard Strauss, his work has stood the test of time and remained an intriguing, though not a very relaxing, experience. It’s no wonder the Met has taken up the task of bringing the story to new heights in the continuing reimaginations of Salome’s story.

As an opera lover with a particular draw toward the powerful female characters of the field, I look forward to seeing the Met’s production. Recent positive receptions of performances of Salome from the Irish National Opera as well as Opéra Bastille, and more prove promising, as do shared thematic leans toward modernized or simplified contexts. As a scholar of religions, despite the redirection of Salome’s story, I still look forward to seeing this production.

While it is important that audiences recognize that Strauss’s opera takes artistic liberties from its Biblical inspiration, exploring the unwritten parts of the Bible, especially in the case of female characters, serves a unique purpose in contemporary lived experiences. It may be the case that the real Salome was not nearly so villainous as the opera suggests, but allowing her to take on a more complex identity offers new perspectives that an opera lover and a religions lover can learn from, and I am very excited to see what I can learn from the Met’s production during the upcoming season.

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© Jane C. Fitzpatrick, 2024.

This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Cover Image: “Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist, by Andrea Solaria, 1507-09” by The Metropolitan Museum of Art is Open Access.