Beneath the face of the wandering moon, spirit and body struggle in all their greatness and wretchedness, until the blood of two bodies flows. Strauss stays close to Wilde's recreation of the biblical story, which leads Salome from her mother's tool to autonomy. It is she who, in her unfulfilled desire for the liberatingly different, the body of the prophet Jochanaan, seeks revenge and demands his head—a price that the male-dominated society around Herod is willing to pay for her dance. Now that Salome holds his severed head in her hands, she can kiss Jochanaan, possessing him, if not alive, then at least dead. As if under a magnifying glass, Strauss casts Oscar Wilde's demonic dramaturgy into music, like an eruption of the psyche, accompanying his protagonist from her failed escape from the decadence of her existence to death.

Herod: Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke

Herodias: Doris Soffel

Salome: Asmik Grigorian/Ambur Braid

Jochanaan:…