Tonight straight from the Met Opera it is Strauss’s white-hot one-act tragedy, which receives its first new production at the company in twenty years. Claus Guth, one of Europe’s leading opera directors, gives the biblical story, already filtered through the beautiful and strange imagination of Oscar Wilde’s play, a psychologically perceptive Victorian-era setting rich in symbolism and subtle shades of darkness and light. Headlining the new staging is soprano Elza van den Heever as the abused and unhinged heroine, who demands the head of Jochanaan, sung by celebrated baritone Peter Mattei. Tenor Gerhard Siegel is Salome’s lecherous stepfather, King Herod, with mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as his wife, Herodias, and tenor Piotr Buszewski as Narraboth. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus.
RTÉ lyric fm, Saturday 17th May, 7pm-10pm
