Richard Strauss’s opera Salome is based on Oscar Wilde’s play Salome.
Strauss composed the opera to a German translation of Wilde’s French play. Hedwig Lachmann prepared the libretto, preserving the biblical drama’s focus on Salome, the daughter of Herodias, and John the Baptist, who is called Jochanaan in the opera. The work’s intense orchestration and psychological subject made it a landmark of early twentieth-century modernism.
Salome premiered at the Dresden Court Opera on 9 December 1905. Its one-act structure and concentrated dramatic setting distinguish it from Strauss’s later large-scale operas. The “Dance of the Seven Veils” is the best-known episode, though the opera’s musical language extends far beyond that scene.
Strauss also wrote Elektra, another powerful one-act opera with a mythological heroine. It is a separate work based on the tragedy of Electra, not a sequel or alternate title for Salome. Both operas are associated with Strauss’s early modernist period.