Salome: Ghastly and Great: Metropolitan Opera, 2025
- Seth Lachterman
- Jun 19
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 8
Music, Richard Strauss
Libretto based on Salome by Oscar Wilde, German translation by Hedwig Lachmann
Conductor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Director, Claus Guth
Salome, Elza van den Heever
Jochanaan, Peter Mattei
Herod, Gerhard Siegel
Herodias, Michelle DeYoung
Narraboth, Piotr Buszewski
May 17, 2025
Salome: Ghastly and Great: Metropolitan Opera, 2025
Over the course of a century and a quarter, Salome has not lost its edge. It is a spectacle that has both repelled and lured audiences since its Dresden debut in 1905. The idea of a femme fatale seductress who first, in proxy, beheads a man who refuses her advances, and then fondles the capital was an exotically revolting bit of theatre. Over the years, with depictions of violent events thrust in our daily consciousness, there is ample justification to magnify the grossness of the Wilde-Strauss perversion to the very limits of taste: such has been the trend in European productions for the past three decades. It suffices to note that not only is Jochanaan beheaded, but the Jewish princess Salome gets to enjoy some fetish time with the open torso-end of the neck (a sniff or two), and then places the head neatly propped between the legs of the seated prophet and kisses him on the lips. Rather than being an abhorrent sight, it was almost devilishly comical.
We’re getting progressively inured to gore. Last year I reviewed the Puts and Campbell opera, Elizabeth Cree, a clever and stylish murder mystery involving a female serial killer, who on one occasion castrates her victim. Such plot points rarely enhance an artistic experience but serve to feed familiar misogynistic fears of violent requitals by a swift blade.
So, what saving graces can be cited for these morbid bits? In the case of Strauss’ music, and in this production, the answer is "a lot." First and foremost, Elza van den Heever is astonishing on all counts, and perfect as Salome in voice, look, and concept. While not visually an image of a spoiled and despoiled teenager, her stature conveys the director’s concept of a “sixteen-year old with the voice of Isolde” (so Strauss said). Claus Guth makes sure we understand that the twisted heroine is a product of continuous abuse from childhood on. Her terms of soilage work for the opera’s dance centerpiece: Guth deftly creates six progressively older childhood doppelgangers of Salome and lets us peek at her psyche’s damage under both Herodias and Herod. Such an approach naturally lends some mitigation to the more extreme coups de théâtre at the hands of this antiheroine.
Guth lifts the setting from the cultural trappings of ancient Galilee and Tetrarch Herod Antipas’ pre-Christian world. Instead, we have Victorian black dress, white collars, and the aspect of button-downed self-repression. Salome, in contrast, appears as a sylph in virginal white, sometimes accompanied by her six childhood doppelgangers. She and her “others” are alike with bottle-blond hair sporting dark roots. Herodias is painted as an aged harlot in concupiscent vermillion from head to toe. The bickering Hebrew scholars are costumed in secular garb, thus avoiding stereotypes. Their disputations become a moment of calculated humor in this unnerving opera.
Ms. Van den Heever, a stately presence, was not required to dance in the Seven Veils interlude, nor was there any uncouth stripping. Partial nudity was minimal and borne by an off-scene ballet dancer. Each veil was used or abused by one of Salome’s childhood selves, an interesting innovation of the director. The playbook for Regietheater here was conceived by Guth who revealed his underlying message in a New York Times interview found here . Histories of childhood abuse, rebellions against lopsided social shackles that hide lasciviousness, and the infliction of physical retribution on young innocents, are the backstories Guth attempts to bare. He apparently borrows imagery and visuals from Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, inspired by a novella by Arthur Schnitzler. Guth recalls those scenes in the film that depict masked men about to commit ceremonial transgressions against beautiful naked women. Actually, Guth’s use of ram and goat head costuming was more a Victorian literary trope suggested in the occultism of writers and famed libertines like Aleister Crowley. In reality, both Kubrick’s and Schniztler’s esoteric costuming were simple images of the Venetian Carnival and not of the pagan imagery implied in Guth’s production. At such rituals, subjugation to arbitrary acts, rules, and abuses became an unspoken societal code. Those who rebel, like Jochanaan by his preaching, and Salome by her depravity, are doomed. The unswervingly chaste prophet is a foil to Salome’s unstoppable lust. Both are abhorrent to Herod.
Our heroine whets her lethal appetite on the amorous Narraboth, well played by tenor Piotr Buszewski, whom she kills – a Guth plot change from the captain’s suicide – to gain access to Jochanaan. In another about-face of Wilde, Guth picks up on Herod’s frenetic state by having him die suddenly after giving the order for Salome’s execution, who then walks away free. In Guth’s tale, Salome has already paid a psychological price for her actions. Would Strauss consider Guth’s ending an ironic wink to Goethe’s "Das Ewig-Weibliche" ( “ the eternal feminine”), another Victorian emblem and literary trope popular in Strauss’ time? One only has to think of Mahler’s tender words of tribute to his wife Alma while apparently being insensitively domineering and repressive toward her. In Strauss and Mahler’s time, the “idea” of femininity was far more exemplary than actual females themselves.
Strauss’ score seethes with the sweet stench of twisted sensibilities as it lures the ear with its exotic and erotic harmonic changes. No other operatic work so successfully evokes and celebrates forbidden sights, scents, and sounds. Mahler was dazzled by his rival’s creation. Coloristic orchestration became something of a contest between the two composers.
Ms. Van den Heever’s delivery is magically both majestically imperious and sensual while conveying a fragility and vulnerability. Her performance constrasts with her remarkable starring role in Die Frau ohne Schatten given this past December, also at the Met. In this Strauss work, she portrays a spirit creature who must become human through an act of selfless love and compassion; in Salome she is an abused girl who seeks pleasure and revenge through her completely obsessive and selfish desires.
Baritone Peter Mattei is in a different vocal world here than, say, in his more renowned heroic roles. The role of Jochanaan demands great projection, weight, a high tessitura, and the ability to sustain long declamatory rantings. Mr. Mattei, who was dressed more like a menacing vagrant than any object of desire, delivered a remarkably focused portrayal.
Herod’s part is typical of Strauss’s faint fondness of the tenor voice. The role calls for that certain German high tenor type that can be shrill and caviling. Gerhard Siegel’s Herod is a rotund and mannered ruler who is subservient to his sexual lust for Salome, and completely dominated by her mother, Herodias. He has some great moments. The patter between him and Salome as he offers her increasingly opulent gifts for her dance conveys an element of ghoulish fun as Salome repeatedly refuses all offers. Michelle de Young, as Herodias, cheers her on. Mr. Siegel was a memorable Mime in past Met Ring productions, and his character in Salome is similarly feckless, blustering, and conniving.
The orchestra, given one of the most challenging scores in the repertory, steamed and sparkled under Mr. Nézet-Séguin’s well-paced direction.
Strauss masterfully evokes the challenging blend of both charm and evil throughout the work. There is a scintillating beauty in this opera that walks the thin line between wholesomeness and a fetid swamp: a true compositional coloristic feat. Once, he purportedly boasted he could portray, in sound, a beer mug! The human stain painted in Salome is a far subtler art. His fame and amoral reputation only grew from here.
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