The Metropolitan Opera Brings Salome a New Head

Photo: Muriel Steinke/Met Opera

When Salome calls for Jochanaan’s head, the Metropolitan Opera can really give it to her. In Richard Strauss’s opera Salome, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play retelling the biblical gospel, Princess Salome falls in love with Jochanaan — probably better known to American Bible-quizzers as John the Baptist — and then demands his severed head from her lecherous stepfather, King Herod. After she gets it, she holds it up and kisses it. It’s the climax of the story...