Salome is used to getting everything she wants, including men. But there is one man she cannot have, the captive, deeply pious John the Baptist. The more he rejects her, the more her obsession grows. Salome’s stepfather, Herod, is obsessed too, by his stepdaughter. He offers her anything she wants if she dances for him. Salome dances, and then she demands her prize – the head of John the Baptist on a silver plate.
A dysfunctional family and forbidden desire are served when Richard Strauss’s brutal Salome, based on Oscar Wilde’s drama, returns – this time with Elisabet Strid in the leading role. This was director Sofia Adrian Jupither’s opera debut in 2013. SvD commended it as «a well crafted psychological chamber play» and an «impressive debut». The journal Opera had «every reason to be delighted with this revival» and wrote that «the audience can feel privileged over a production that in every way achieves world class performance in the pit.»