Classical Notes - Classical Classics – Strauss: Salome, By Peter Gutmann

Our consideration of the opera Salome explores the underlying legend, its depictions in prior art and literature, Oscar Wilde's play, Richard Strauss's adaptation, the opera's structure, censorship in its early reception, Strauss's music, later adaptations, early recordings of arias, complete recordings, and some sources for further information.

The past century has seen an unprecedented acceleration of social change – and with it a dwindling of esthetic sensitivity. As a result, nearly all works of art that were deemed shocking or even bold in their time have retained barely a shred of their former power and now seem historical relics rather than genuine jolts. One of the very few exceptions is Richard Strauss's 1905 Salome.

The tale of Salome began two millennia ago.

Titian: St. John the Baptist

John the Baptist was a prophet in the tradition of Isaiah, railing against sinful behavior. To purify their bodies after they had cleansed their souls with a commitment to righteous living he immersed his followers in the Jordan River. (This was not a novel practice, as there are numerous references to it in the Old Testament. The ritual purification bath persists in Jewish observance today in the form of mikvah.) He hailed the coming of the Messiah and is thought to have baptized Jesus. (He also appears to have been a keen ecologist long before the trends of our time – he is reputed to have lived in the desert, dressed in a camel hair garment with a leather belt, and subsisted on locusts and wild honey.)

The earliest accounts differ in a key detail as to the cause for John's demise. The Jewish historian Josephus reported in his Antiquities of the Jews that Herod the Tetrarch (the regional Roman ruler of Galilee), fearing that John's growing influence might foment a rebellion, had him imprisoned and then put to death. (Although written c. 94 AD, the oldest copy of the Josephus manuscript dates only to the 11th century, yet scholars tend to credit its authenticity despite ample opportunities for revision by dozens of generations of editors.) Josephus adds a further cogent detail – that Herod's brother (known as Herod the Great) and his wife Herodias had a daughter and that shortly after the birth Herodias "taking it into her head to flout the way of our fathers, married Herod the Tetrarch, her husband's brother by the same father, who was tetrarch of Galilee; to do this she parted from a living husband," a severe sin at the time.

Biblical accounts link these two seemingly disparate strands to provide a more personal motive for John's death. According to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, Herodias wanted to kill John because he condemned her incestuous remarriage, but Herod the Tetrarch protected John as a holy man and simply had him imprisoned. Then, as recounted in the flowing text of the King James version (Mark 6: 21-28):

Despite the brevity and detachment of its narrative, the Biblical tale infers a tantalizing glut of salacious passion – revenge! lust! corruption! blood! remorse! – none of which was lost on artists (or their patrons) who could indulge and portray these wicked fantasies in the guise of devotion to a sacred text. Indeed it became a favorite subject of Italian Renaissance painters, albeit in the idealized, ornamental style of the time. Consider, for example, the rich sheen and repressed expressions in the early 16th Century painting by Bernardino Luini (in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts),

Luini: Salome Receiving the Head of St. John the Baptist

Gozzoli: The Dance of Salome

which suggests only the barest hint of emotional anguish or physical pain – Salome seems merely wistful, while John appears to have prayerfully accepted his fate. Or consider the 1462 altarpiece panel by Benozzo Gozzoli, which illustrates three incidents in the narrative – Salome dancing before Herod and his guests, John about to be beheaded, and Salome presenting her prize to Herodias, all combined in a single edifying composition. While such early depictions are mostly chaste and sanitized, they presumably sufficed to stoke viewers' imaginations rather than merely helping to educate the illiterate. In the Romantic era discretion ceded to more graphic fantasies, often providing an opportunity to paint Salome partially or fully nude in the throes of an erotic dance. Most influential of all, at least for present purposes, were two 1876 works by Gustav Moreau, rumored to have been created in response to opium-induced hallucinations, and full of mystical, surreal, symbolic dream imagery – "Salome Dancing Before Herod," an oil painting with sumptuously rich and complex surface depth on which he reportedly labored for seven years, and "L'apparition," one of several similar watercolors that was hugely popular, having been acclaimed at the 1876 Salon and subsequently exhibited in the Louvre.

A parallel trend of embroidering the simple tale emerged in the literature of the late 19th Century. Many authors added elements of fantasy that enhanced the legend and would wend their way into its most prominent operatic version. Perhaps the most elaborate arose in Joris-Karl Huysman's 1884 A Rebours (Against the Grain / Against Nature), in which the protagonist purchases both Moreau works and rhapsodizes at great length over their splendor, conjuring intricate psychic, and unabashedly erotic, images. Indeed, the language itself throbs with unbridled passion. Consider:

Elle commence la lubrique danse … ses seins ondulent et, au frottement de ses colliers qui tourbillonnent, leurs bouts de dressent; sur la moiteur de sa peau les diamants, attachés, scintillent; ses bracelets, ses ceintures, ses bagues, crachent des étincelles; sur sa robe triomphale, couturée des perles, ramagée d'argent, lamée d'or, la cuirasse des orfèvreries dont chaque maille est une pierre, entre en combustion, croise des serpenteaux de feu, grouille sur la chair mate, sur la peau rose thé, ainsi que des insectes splendides aux élytres éblouissants, marbrés de carmin, ponctués de jaune aurore, diaprés de bleu d'acier, tigrés de vert paon.

She begins the lewd dance … her breasts quiver and, rubbed lightly by her swaying necklaces, their rosy points stand pouting; on her moist skin glitter clustered diamonds; from her bracelets, her belts, her rings, dart sparks of fire; over her robe of triumph, bestrewn with pearls, broidered with silver, studded with gold, a corselet of chased goldsmith's work, on each mesh a precious stone, seems ablaze with coiling fiery serpents, crawling and creeping over the pink flesh like gleaming insects with dazzling wings of brilliant colors, marbled with scarlet, patterned with yellow dawn, mottled with steely blue, striped with peacock green.

Gustave Flaubert elaborated the bare Biblical narrative in Herodias, the last of his 1877 Trois Contes (Three Tales), by casting it as the culmination of a political intrigue in which the title character endures a lengthy harangue from John and then recalls her daughter from exile to wreak revenge.

Moreau: Salome Dancing Before Herod

Moreau: The Apparition

In a wicked psychological twist, "for many months her mother had caused [Salome] to be instructed in dancing and other arts of pleasing with the sole idea that … the tetrarch should fall in love with her fresh young beauty and feminine wiles" both to retaliate against John and to regain power over her weak husband whose love had faded. Of course, the plot succeeded: "Her arms, her feet, her clothing even, seemed to emit streams of magnetism that set the spectators' blood on fire. … Even the crabbed, elderly priests gazed upon her with dilated nostrils." Defenseless, Herod promises her the world but accedes to her gruesome demand.

Heinrich Heine's 1841 epic poem Atta Troll took substantial liberty with the story but introduced the notion of a depraved but amorous fixation on the severed head, expressed in a tone of gentle derision. Heine envisioned Herodias as a lover of the Baptist who "perhaps a little peevish with her swain had him beheaded," became mad, "died of love's distraction" and rode through the air, whirling the bloody head above her "with childish laughter" and catching it "like a plaything." As for the logic of deeming Herodias to be the Baptist's lover, "Else there were no explanation / Of that lady's curious longing – / Would a woman want the head of / Any man she did not love?"

Salome also had inspired Hériodiade, an 1881 opera by Jules Massenet, its libretto a heavily romanticized adaptation of the Flaubert account. This time it is Salome who is enamored of John, who comforts her while she is in exile following the marriage of Herodias to Herod, who, in turn, is in love with Salome. Amid much political intrigue, Herod has the Prophet executed both at the urging of Herodias as payback for condemning her and to fulfill his illicit love of their daughter. At a lavish banquet Salome tries to kill her mother and then, in despair, stabs herself.

And then came Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), whose 1892 play was the most extensive treatment of all, both a synthesis of its predecessors and a strikingly original conception of sheer perversity and unabashed eroticism.

Oscar Wilde

Salome seemingly was an atypical subject for a lecturer on esthetics and the author of witty drawing-room social critiques. Yet Wilde had a biting disdain for conventional morality, as is manifest in some memorable adages from the introduction to his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (which fairly bursts with them):

Considered shocking and scandalous, performances were widely banned. Sarah Bernhardt's plans to mount the premiere in England collapsed when the Lord Chamberlain refused to license it on the ground that representations of Biblical characters were forbidden (a dubious pretext, since depictions of Samson, Moses and even Jesus somehow routinely managed to pass muster).

Beardsley
Self-portrait

Its premiere was finally given in Paris, but not until 1896, by which time its author had been imprisoned for "the love that dare not speak its name" (the result of a foolish attempt to pursue a libel suit against a nobleman whose accusation of sodomy proved quite truthful.)

In the meantime, its English publication in 1894 added a new, highly influential element – drawings by 21-year old Aubrey Beardsley (who would die only four years later).

Beardsley: J'ai baisee ta bouche, Iokanaan

His first, and most famous, depiction was a single image, "J'ai Baisé ta Bouche, Iokanaan" ("I Have Kissed Your Mouth, Jokanaan"), in an April 1893 London journal, which drew Wilde's admiration. (Jokanaan is the Hebrew name for John and is used throughout the play and opera.) Indeed, Wilde presented Beardsley with a copy of the play inscribed, "To Aubrey, the only artist who, besides myself, knows what the dance of the seven veils is, and can see that invisible dance." Commissioned by publisher John Lane to illustrate the English edition, after substitutions and censorship (largely over explicitly-rendered genitals) Beardsley produced 13 drawings, including a title page. While some ("Enter Herodias," "The Eyes of Herod," "The Dancer's Reward") clearly relate to the narrative, several others ("The Woman in the Moon," "The Peacock Dress," "The Toilette of Salome") do not. Susan Owens considers them satiric and a caricature of the play, owing to their disjuncture from the text, their visual jokes and obscene details, their grotesque bodily and facial features, and their incoherence as a uniform suite (all of which, in her view, serve to call attention to themselves). Wilde apparently grasped this as he called the title page "quite dreadful." Despite their varying styles, all of Beardsley's drawings were done in black ink in a stark art-nouveau style and certainly reflect the unabashed audacity of the play, if not its actual narrative. They also set a standard for gesture and décor that would influence stagings and adaptations.

Despite bans elsewhere, Wilde's Salome found a welcome in Germany. It was at a November 1902 Reinhart production in Berlin that Richard Strauss (1864 - 1949) encountered it. Strauss was known primarily as a conductor and the composer of tone poems in the tradition of Liszt. In the decade from Aus Italien (From Italy) (1887) through Don Juan, Tod und Verkärung (Death and Transfiguration), Macbeth, Till Eulenspiegel, Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) Don Quixote and Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) (1898) he "dealt with massively grandiose conceptions and a series of very literal pictorial or characteristic episodes that stretched the boundaries of purely musical form to the limit" (Tethys Carpenter). His penultimate tone poem seemed to have exhausted his inspiration in the genre – the bloated 45-minute Symphonia Domestica (Domestic Symphony) (1903) was an idealized musical portrait of a day in his own family life, ranging from sugary cooing of his baby to a fugal quarrel and a rather literal depiction of love-making (with separate climaxes for himself and his wife). Strauss wrote Salome from August 1903 through September 1904 and completed the scoring in August 1905.

Given his temperate propensities to that point, many observers have wondered at the depths from which Strauss suddenly summoned the acute caustic spur for Salome (and its equally jarring successor, Elektra [1908]).

Richard Strauss

They further grope to explain the irony of composing a radical and decadent opera concurrently with a tone poem celebrating blissful domesticity. Perhaps it was ego – when chided for his ostentatious personal display in the Symphonia Domestica, Strauss stated: "I don't know why I should not write a symphony about myself. I find myself as interesting as Napoleon or Alexander."

Howard Goodall offers another intriguing perspective – that Strauss's newly rebellious style was his artistic revenge on the society that had snubbed his first two operas. Guntram (1894) had been an abject failure, undoubtedly due to Strauss's unabashed imitation of his then-idol Wagner, both in the music and his own insipid libretto that finds a medieval singer in search of redemption. Feuersnot (In Need of Fire) (1901) barely fared better. It was a social satire based on a bawdy Flemish legend in which a humiliated suitor, ridiculed by the mayor's virgin daughter, exacts revenge through a spell that extinguishes all the town's fires that can only be lit from the heat of her first orgasm, which the suitor nobly agrees to educe and which Strauss depicts explicitly in a blazing orchestral passage. (Although the opera was condemned as obscene, it was a rather pale adaptation of the raunchy original legend, in which the girl had to strip, kneel on a table, and relight each fire from a flame that sprung from her backside as all the townsfolk passed by.) According to Goodall, Strauss's retaliation was Salome. Interestingly, after the esthetic explosion of Salome, both Wilde and Strauss (after Elektra) returned to the innocuous world of their earlier work – Wilde with witty social critiques (Lady Windermere's Fan, An Ideal Husband, The Importance of Being Earnest) and Strauss with operas of comic fantasy (Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Intermezzo) to which he devoted himself exclusively until the chamber works of his final years.

Indeed, the text all but demanded a radical musical setting, which Strauss amply provided. In 1942, Strauss recalled his goals as providing the "authentic Eastern color and vibrant sunshine" that he felt most "Hebrew and oriental" operas lacked, He sought to achieve this through "truly exotic harmony that shimmered, especially in the strange cadences, like iridescent silk," including whole-tone scales, remote tonalities and bitonality, the last in order to depict the friction between sharply delineated and disparate personalities. The instrumentation is complex, creatively utilizing a huge orchestra with strings divided into as many as 11 parts to achieve extraordinary effects, including multiple harmonies. Indeed Paul Henry Lang considers Salome an orchestral opera in which the vocal parts struggle to project character against the onslaught of eloquent instrumentation and composer Gabriel Fauré called it "a symphonic poem with vocal parts added." Abert credits Strauss with associating characters with keys – e.g., John with A-flat, Salome with C-sharp. Others point to Wagnerian associative tonality, by which Strauss correlated a key with a dramatic element. As an example, Derrick Puffett notes that Strauss draws a connection between Salome (C-sharp major) and the moon (its enharmonic of D-flat major). The complexity increases with polytonality – Craig Ayrey notes that when Salome finally kisses Jokanann's mouth, we hear superimposed chords of c-sharp (representing her desire) and f-sharp (eroticism), yielding a bitter dissonance that underlines the plot's consequence of this fulfillment. Goodall cites it as "the most dissonant chord that had ever been heard" and contends that it is "hard to find a more aggressively uncomfortable combination of notes."

Both play and opera are cast in a single continuous act in real time (about 100 minutes) on a moonlit night on the terrace of Herod's palace. Salome, bored, emerges from a banquet, is enthralled by the voice of Jokanaan's mystical prophecies and entices Narraboth, the captain of the guard, to disobey orders and bring the Prophet out of the cistern in which he is imprisoned. Her fascination oscillates between revulsion and lust as he repulses her advances and finally returns to the cistern. Drunken, wearied by arguments with Herodias and a chorus of quarrelsome Jews,

Beardsley: The Eyes of Herod

and longing for Salome, Herod induces her to dance by promising any reward she desires. Although at this point the opera is nearly two-thirds over, its real business now begins with the two most striking and popular segments.

First, Salome performs the "Dance of the Seven Veils," often heard in concert and on record as a free-standing orchestral piece. Del Mar calls it banal but brilliant, tossing together a potpourri of tunes from the opera, albeit in a way that Mann considers mechanical and thematically meaningless, with a result that Del Mar likens more to a Viennese waltz than to evoking the authentic Eastern color Strauss claimed to have sought. Consistent with Strauss having written it last, Heinz Becker considers the Dance a symphonic flashback in which Salome's emotional experiences are summed up, a catalog of past events and motives heard throughout the opera, all leading to "the most stunning contrast – a pause of total silence which makes manifest the speechlessness of the world." Ernest Krauss finds it dominated by the inner turmoil of Salome's corrupt psyche.

Staging the Dance encounters two fundamental challenges. First, Strauss aptly characterized Salome as the implausible combination of a 16-year old girl with the voice of an Isolde. At the risk of sounding callous let's just say that very few divas who can generate the huge vocal power of the title role have figures that are apt to convincingly lure Herod into his reckless bargain, much less dance without seeming grotesque.

Beardsley: The Belly Dance

Indeed, the first Salome was Marie Wittich, a prominent Wagnerian soprano with a suitably ample girth, who launched the common practice of substituting a lithe ballerina for the dance. A second problem is just how much to reveal. Early productions teased with then-suggestive outfits, while some modern productions drape Salome literally in seven veils and even opt for a climax of full nudity. Strauss was quite clear as to his view, rebuking "the music-hall exoticism of some of the later productions with their snake-like writhings [that] often exceeded the bounds of decency and good taste." He insisted: "Anyone who has ever visited the Orient and observed the propriety of the ladies there will understand that Salome, a chaste virgin, can only be played with the simplest, most refined gesticulation unless she is to awaken only horror and disgust instead of pity." Indeed, he insisted that for maximum impact all the acting should be "confined to the utmost simplicity, in contrast to the overly-excited music." Both issues are tackled in a 1990 Deutsche Oper video led by Giuseppe Sinopoli in which 42 year old Catherine Malfitano not only triumphs vocally but manages a highly stylized dance (choreographed by Bernd Schindowski) consistent with the angular gestures of the staging, albeit ending fully nude under a very sheer veil that comes across as more crass than beguiling (and that comes completely off at the climax). (In a less daring 1997 Covent Garden Decca video conducted by Christoph von Dohnanyi she remains fully robed and dances more conventionally, turning portions into an enticing pas de deux with Herod.) Audio recordings, of course, avoid such issues altogether, leaving visualization of the entire Dance to the listener's imagination.

The dance concluded, to Herod's alarm and her mother's delight, Salome rebuffs Herod's attempts to dissuade her with fabulous gifts and insists upon the head of Jokanaan which, after great suspense fueled by grating harmonics played high on the double bass, the executioner delivers on a silver platter. Then begins a riveting apostrophe, unmatched in all of opera for its sheer queasy perversity, in which medium and message painfully collide; as John Williamson notes, Strauss's surfaces lend an esthetic glamour to the hysterical and depraved. Accompanied by spectacularly gorgeous music that in other contexts would buoy the most glorious surge of pristine natural love, Salome addresses the gory head, pouring out her obsession before the horrified court:

Salome's oration crystallizes the work's essential tension between text and music, which prompted a groundswell of condemnation from established critics who expectedly bridled against its assault upon convention. Much of their censure arose from loathing Wilde's lifestyle rather than his play or Strauss's opera. Thus Adam Röder asserted in 1907, "If sadists, masochists, lesbians and homosexuals come and presume to tell us that their crazy world of spirit and feeling is to be interpreted as manifestations of art, then steps must be taken in the interests of health. Art has no interest in sanctifying bestialities which arise from sexual perversity."

The Dresden opening

Max Kalbeck, reviewing the premiere in the Weiner Tagblatt, called Wilde an "erotomaniac," his play "fertilizer" and the result "like a circus freakshow, a voluptuously disgusting feast for the senses." Writing in the 1908 edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, J. A. Fuller Maitland assured readers that "music itself cannot be prostituted to base use, though various qualities incidental to music may be turned to the purposes of pornography. … It would be going too far to say that any of the music itself would have a morally harmful influence on anyone."

Censorship seemed an inevitable consequence. Indeed, although the Dresden premiere was a huge success, generating 38 curtain calls, the Vienna Censorship Board refused Mahler's attempt to mount the opera there due to the "objectionable nature of the whole story. … Sexual pathology is not suitable for our Court stage." The New York dress rehearsal (foolishly given on a Sunday morning right after church) was excoriated by a physician in a New York Times letter as "a detailed and explicit exposition of the most horrible, disgusting, revolting and unmentionable features of degeneracy that I have ever heard, read of or imagined." Not to be outdone, H. E. Krehbiel, the New York Tribune critic, cited the "moral stench" of the "pestiferous work" that was "abhorrent, bestial and loathsome." After a single performance dismayed patrons quashed the rest of the run. Salome would not be heard again in New York until 1934.

Elsewhere ridiculous accommodations were demanded. The Kaiser allowed presentation in Berlin only if a Star of Bethlehem appeared on the backdrop at the end.

Leon Herbo: Salome (1889)

In London the Lord Chamberlain insisted that Jokanaan be renamed "The Prophet," refused display of the severed head, and required that references to Salome's passion be changed to spiritual longing. Thus, Salome addresses an empty platter by singing, "If you had looked upon me you would have blessed me" (rather than "loved me"). (John Culshaw not only notes the hypocrisy of allowing presentation of the play but not the opera, but also contends that the bowdlerized form was more offensive than the original, due to its futile attempt to disguise obvious sexual desire in the cloak of religious piety.)

Strauss was not one to deny the value of controversy: "The most certain road to universal fame is to have a work banned by the censor." Indeed, he had the last laugh, recalling in 1942: "On one occasion [Kaiser] Wilhelm II said, 'I'm sorry Strauss composed this Salome. He is going to do himself a lot of harm with this.' Thanks to this harm, I was able to afford my villa at Garmisch!"

By focusing on the play, early critics tended to dismiss the music as largely needless. Wilde had described the prose of his play as having "refrains whose recurring motifs make it like a piece of music and bind it together like a ballad." Robert Hirshfeld wrote in the Weiner Abendpost that the music had no esthetic reason, as the play had its own rhythms, syncopation of thoughts, pauses and melding of harmonious and dissonant words (and this in the German translation) – and so Strauss's contribution "represents what is most annoying in art – superfluous and inorganic." Writing in the same issue, Julius Korngold agreed: "If a poet makes his own music, the last thing he needs is another one." Kalbeck felt that even beyond the Dance the orchestra overwhelmed the stage action with "colossal exaggeration" that "strips the text of subtlety." Indeed, Strauss's contribution was belittled as not only pointless but superficial, literal and uninspired; Stravinsky, on the cusp of his own Rite of Spring, called it "triumphant banality." In that regard, comparisons with Wagner were inevitable. Hirschfeld hailed Wagner's texts as designed to interweave with his music, while Korngold asserted that "Wagner touches our feelings with new greatness and beauty" while with Strauss he "felt nothing after the curtain falls – the audience goes away empty." But such commentary ignores that the two composers' approaches were intentionally disparate. Consider the final arias of Salome and Wagner's Ring. Wagner supports and invigorates the noble words and underlying theme of Brunhilde's "Immolation Scene" with suitably glorious accompaniment whereas Strauss's equally absorbing music deliberately contrasts with the sheer perversity of Salome's fulfillment.

More recent commentary invariably focuses on the music and largely disregards the text. Henry Carse disparages Strauss's orchestration as highly skilled yet inclined to seek novelty by overloading the score, aiming at mere oddity and striving after elaborate effects. Another critic chided that he felt Strauss's orchestra was incomplete and suggested that for his next opera he should include "four locomotives with double boilers, three foghorns and a battery of howitzers." Yet William Mann cites the score as the most brilliant and far-reaching of all of Strauss's works for the very reason that repelled early critics – its deliberate disconnect between the aloof personages and its melodic richness and lyricism, as well as its musical characterization, thematic sculpture and coloring.

SOME SALOME THEMES

Salome's motif

The lilting, sultry Dance:

The Prophet's two themes:

The two variants of Salome's kiss:

Salome's lust:

Composers, too, were elated. Gabriel Fauré considered the themes mediocre, but "developed, worked and interwoven with such marvelous skill that their intrinsic interest is exceeded by the magic of an orchestral technique of real genius," Maurice Ravel cited the "burning hot wind that storms the soul," and Paul Dukas avowed that it disclosed to him formerly unknown secrets of orchestration. Conductor Erich Leinsdorf cites as his favorite examples of Strauss's musical subtlety "Salome's opening phrases in free rhythm that bespeak her restless flightiness," tonal coloring that depicts the dampness of the cistern, the sudden thinning of the texture when Salome first sees the gaunt prophet to suggest the collapse of her fantasies, and Herodias singing in a key that clashes with the accompaniment as Herod proclaims "Your voice wearies me." Others tend to belittle the sweet harmonies and insipid melodies that accompany Jokanaan's proclamations as unduly blatant characterization, although Williamson contends that they function as barely concealed contempt for conventional religion, which Strauss had renounced, and more generally that much of the orchestral amplification serves to exhibit the superficiality of the characters. The most blatant example is the dissonant quintet of five quarrelling Jews in the opera's only set piece that has no plausible connection to the rest of the narrative or theme; apparently intended as comedy or perhaps light-hearted ridicule (complete with a mocking motif suggesting mindless chatter), it now seems a nasty anti-Semitic stereotype; although inherited from Wilde's play (his lover later emerged as a virulent anti-Semite), Strauss apparently had no reservations about including this episode.

Perhaps the opera is best viewed as a hugely impressive product of its time – as Frances Robinson notes, it is wedged between the final gasp of monarchy and the rise of Freudian analysis. Ernest Krause goes further, viewing the opera from a socialist perspective as a product of decadence "with its craving for sexual satiety and its blindness to reality [in which] the people are ignored and the characters entangle themselves in webs of perversely exaggerated passions which distort their view of the world and make normal relationships with other people impossible." Williamson contends that from a modern perspective much of the early sense of immorality has since devolved to kitsch. Puffett provides an apt summary of the diverse commentary by quipping that Salome is "a rich work – it has something to offer (and offend) everyone." But whether out of love or hate, few can resist it.

While the opera Salome may seem sui generis, imposing adaptations of the underlying tale continued to emerge in music, film and dance.

Nazimova's Salome

A 1907 choreographic tone poem by Florent Schmitt was based on a literary poem by Robert d'Humieres in which John tries to protect Salome from attack by Herod, the ghost of his head haunts her, and a cataclysmic volcano buries the entire evil court. (The calamitous ending may have been inspired by one of Jules Laforgue's 1886 Moralités legendaries (Moral Tales), a parody of the Flaubert account, that had presented a twist in which Salome falls to her death when she loses her balance throwing the head out to sea from a promontory.) Both epic and impressionist, Schmitt's score ends in a savage dance of irregular rhythm that Stravinsky admired and that may have prompted the finale of his Rite of Spring.

1923 saw a stunning feature film produced by and starring the exotic Crimean/American Nazimova (née Miriam Levinton) with sets and costumes that evoked Beardsley's drawings and subtitles firmly in the spirit of Wilde ("Thy hair is like the black nights when the moon hides her face"). The 1953 movie

Exquisitely paced and full of expressive closeups, it melds the conventions of silent film with ballet. Teasing with extreme modesty (she adds veils at the end of her dance and slinks behind a curtain to kiss Jokanaan's mouth), Nazimova bristles with sexual longing, yet, following Strauss's vision, acts with great subtlety, and much of her dancing is comprised of immobile posing. Although incomparable when taken on its own terms, the film was a flop at the time, fueled in part by aversion to the lifestyle of Nazimova and the director, Charles Bryant, with whom she shared a marriage of convenience – both were openly gay, as, rumor had it, were much of the cast and crew.

Two subsequent cinema incarnations were inventive integrations of a performance into a backstory. Ken Russell's 1988 Salome's Last Dance imagines a flamboyant Wilde visiting a brothel where the play is being staged by prostitutes, while Carlos Saura's 2002 Salome absorbs a flamenco version into biographies of the principal dancers as they rehearse. Sadie Salome (sheet music)

In contrast, Hollywood's take was laughably trite – Rita Hayworth starring in William Dieterle's 1953 Salome, a predictable love story complete with stereotyped "oriental" dance music, overwrought acting by a slobbering Charles Laughton as Herod and a gloating Judith Anderson as Herodias, and a happy ending as Salome flees her parents with a handsome palace guard to bask in redemption at the Sermon on the Mount.

We might also note in passing that the subject was sufficiently intriguing to spawn pop musical works with little connection beyond the title.

Maude Allen as Salome

Among these were "A Vision of Salome" by Archibald Joyce available in at least four different versions, "The Passing of Salome," a rather funereal waltz, "Sal-O-May," a strutting jazzy march by Robert Stolz, and, most inapt of all, a "Salome Oriental Intermezzo" by William Lorraine played on a Monarch 78 as a perky solo by Vess L. Ossman, touted in a spoken introduction as "the banjo king." Perhaps most notable was "Sadie Salome (Go Home)," the very first success by Irving Berlin (popularized in 1909 by an equally unknown Fanny Brice in her Ziegfeld Follies debut), which told the comic tale of Sadie Cohen, a sweet local girl who shocks her boyfriend when he sees her perform: "Don't do that dance, I tell you Sadie / That's not a bus'ness for a lady! / Oy, Oy, Oy, Oy / Where is your clothes? / You better go and get your dresses / Ev'ryone's got the op'ra glasses / Oy! such a sad disgrace / No one looks in your face."

And speaking of risqué theatrical offshoots, perhaps the most notorious (and successful – 250 London performances in 1908) was Maud Allen's "Vision of Salome," a music-hall act combining posing and, as one critic put it, "sensuous gyrations." A Dublin detractor derided (in great detail) her self-designed diaphanous and highly-revealing costume (which, he admitted, "a goodly section of the audience applauded very vigorously") and the New York Sun reported that her "dance [was] of only one veil and not much of a veil at that. She does not take it off. She does not need to." (Allen's life was even more sensational than her staging – her brother was hanged for a double murder, and, shades of Wilde, she brought and lost a highly-publicized defamation lawsuit against accusations of sexual perversion made by a member of Parliament who was known for far-fetched raving that Jews, gays and German spies were undermining the moral fabric of British society.)

Recordings of Salome face an immediate quandary. Should an effort be made to intensify the impact of the original in order to jolt modern listeners who are largely immune from the levels that a century ago sufficed to overwhelm audiences still immersed in Victorian propriety (a burden further magnified by having to forego the visual aspect)? Or should the production be relatively reticent, leaving the revulsion to be inferred? Strauss presumably would have opted for the latter, having told the orchestra at the premiere that he wanted a light-toned lyrical approach that should be played as Mendelssohnian "fairy music," like a "scherzo with a fatal conclusion," and having sought a lyric soprano for the title role, which he envisioned as a chaste but sexy virgin, so as to add complexity to the character. Indeed, the conductor of the premiere, Ernest von Schuch, selected and coached by Strauss, was reputed for his refinement. Yet Strauss was hardly consistent in his counsel, as he reportedly instructed the orchestra during a rehearsal: "We want wild beasts here" and admonished them to play louder since he could still hear the singers. Even so, he chastised Toscanini, who led the Italian premiere, for having "slaughtered the singers and the drama" beneath a "piteously raging orchestra" to "perform a symphony without singers" and contrasted it with Germany, where "the orchestra accompanies and one understands the singers' every word" – a curious complaint, in light of the primacy of vocals in Italian opera, of which Toscanini was a foremost advocate. And while later known for his objective podium style, Strauss was described toward the launch of his career as doing "a fantastic dance while conducting," and was scolded by his father, the principal horn of the Munich court orchestra, for making "snake-like gestures."

John Culshaw, producer of the 1961 Solti recording, raises a telling point – not all of Strauss's extreme blends of tone color are practicable in the theatre with a fixed layout of the instruments, but rather are better revealed by variable deployment of the orchestral forces. Thus Culshaw contends that to capture all the audible nuances in their correct proportion requires technical intervention through creative microphone placement and mixing, with the result of placing the listener closer to the score and thus the drama.

Emmy Destinn as Salome

Culshaw also notes the extreme challenges of the score – that singers struggle to sing in one key while the orchestra plays in a distant one (such as A-minor vs. A-flat major) and that "one operatic soprano in a hundred can sing in tone and with passion" the "murderous entries on high G" as a frenzied Salome demands the prophet's mouth. Rests between retakes of brief but fatiguing fragments – not to mention editing among multiple takes – are welcome allies unavailable in the theatre but routine techniques in the studio.

Such technological luxuries were unavailable to the pioneers – for better (spontaneity) or worse (inhibition, flaws) what they sang went directly onto the disc. In a 1911 New York Times interview, Johanna Gadski claimed that she would never sing Salome and that Strauss had told her: "I don't write my music for people with beautiful voices like yours." Yet in 1908 she had recorded a brief, 93 second snippet of "Ich bin verleibt in deinem Leib" ("I am amorous of thy body"), in which Salome lusts for the (then-living) Jokanaan, in a high, tremulous, cutting voice without much semblance of craving or temptation. The year before, Emmy Destinn cut two more compelling sides from the same scene. Her own "Ich bin verleibt" is noble, as befits a princess, yet ardent, as suits an adolescent's first overwhelming crush. Her ensuing "Dein Haar is grässlich!" ("Thy hair is horrible!") drips with rushed venom and fully reflects her wrath at being snubbed until the final line ("Lass mich ihn küssen, deinin Mund") ("Let me kiss thy mouth") melts into a tender plea. Despite some intonation issues, her vibrato as well as her overall bearing is exquisitely expressive.

Curiously, the first recording of the final scene, seemingly the most inviting excerpt for a dramatic soprano, had to await 1921, when an eight-minute abridgement was cut by German soprano Barbara Kemp. Her rendition, conducted by Leo Blech (rather than her husband-to-be, c Von Schillings), is rather lightweight and makes little attempt to convey the princess's perverse and chaotic emotions.

Gota Ljungberg as Salome

Yet Strauss deeply admired her warmth and sought to cast her in the leading roles in many of his operas, including Salome, and so perhaps her rather reserved recording reflects his ideal better than other more overtly characterized ones.

The very end of the acoustical era brought the first substantial set of Salome excerpts from HMV in 1924 – six very full 12" sides (26½ minutes total) of the opening scene (heavily abridged), the first stanza of Jokanaan's harangue ("Wo ist er") couched within churning orchestral passages, Salome's Dance (two sides) and her concluding apostrophe (abbreviated to two sides), the last of which is endowed by Göta Ljungberg with a bracing fusion of purity, command and sheer vocal splendor. The amount of orchestral detail captured by the archaic apparatus is truly remarkable and, atypically for acoustic vocal recordings, the balances do not favor the singers. Albert Coates whips the score into a riveting frenzy, as might be expected from a conductor known for his extraordinary vitality on disc.

The most promising set of extended excerpts – potentially, at least – was led by the composer himself on a set of 78 rpm sides privately recorded by Hermann May and issued only in 1994 as part of Koch Schwann's Vienna State Opera Live CD edition.

Richard Strauss conducting

Like the remarkable Mapleson Met cylinders four decades earlier at the dawn of recording, May's were captured backstage on amateur equipment – eight sides on February 15, 1942 and three more on May 6 with largely different casts. All present random 4½-minute chunks that often end in mid-phrase just as we begin to settle in. Yet despite that frustration they are invaluable as our only aural evidence of Strauss conducting one of his operas, albeit decades after its creation, during which his approach had evolved. His style is hard to characterize – tempos and dynamics are varied but moderated and textures are generally light, with particular attention to inner voices, although the sonics are too crude to effectively convey the transparency, "brilliance and shimmer[ing] with a wide spectrum of nuances" that the notes proclaim. The vocals, though, display far less finesse. The men tend to dominate with persistent, heroic declamation, although the balances may owe more to proximity to the single offstage microphone than a true reflection of intended audience perspective. Thus, while it seems thematically appropriate that a curious Salome is barely audible at the beginning of her confrontation with an assertive Jokanaan, this might not be intentional. Especially revealing are two sides of the finale, sung with tangible conviction by Else Schulz, whose acute vibrato evokes grand opera. Also enlightening is the sixth side, which presents the last three minutes of the Dance with more grace and inflection than power or mystery, yet culminating in a potent timpani-fueled climax. In comparison with Strauss's two studio 78s of the Dance cut in 1916 and 1928, we can't be sure if the extra refinement and vitality is a function of Strauss's artistic maturation, his greater sense of freedom in live performance or his distaste for the sterility of the studio environment. In any event, the Strauss excerpts belie his undeserved reputation as a lazy, indifferent conductor and suggest a strong stylistic affinity with his beloved Mozart, a kinship further evidenced by five sides May recorded in 1941 of Idomeneo in Strauss's own adaptation for which he wrote a new intermezzo and finale that are a fascinating blend of the original filtered through his own late Romantic mindset (and the voices are far more temperate, thus suggesting that Strauss intended his Salome singers to be forceful and spirited).

Recordings of the final scene continued. Two seem especially significant.

Marjorie Lawrence as Salome

In 1934 Marjorie Lawrence, lead soprano for the Paris Opera, recorded it in French with the Pasdeloup Orchestra and Piero Coppola, who headed HMV's French branch and led an extensive series of recordings there. While her interpretation brims with colorful personality, much is missing in the sheer sound of the translation – "Ah! Tu n'as pas voulu" lacks the elemental snarl of "Ah! Du wolltest mich nicht" and forfeits the constant chafing between the alluring music and the rough edges of the German text. Hearing this all-French production compels recognition that the German words themselves often abrade the music, thus comprising a basic level of friction in Strauss's original conception. That tension is in full evidence in a scorchingly intense 1941 DG Berlin recording by Maria Cebotari led by Artur Rother. Another Strauss favorite (although in wartime Germany, for obvious reasons, his choices were restricted), she intensifies obsession, abetted by the rather coarse sonic fidelity, and leaves no doubt that the virginal princess has fully transformed into a full-fledged Wagnerian heroine, at the risk of overly simplifying the underlying psychology of the plot. (Alas, in lieu of the standard ending, the music drops off into a set of lulling cadences, thus undercutting the potency of all that came before.)

Perhaps the most acclaimed of all free-standing final scenes is the 1949 recording by Ljuba Welitsch, cut shortly after her spectacular Met debut. Francis Robinson, the long-time assistant director of the Met, claimed that her debut spawned the longest and loudest ovation he had ever heard.

Ljuba Welitsch as Salome

In a New York Sun review, Irving Kolodin reported that "the theater was still cheering fifteen minutes after the final curtain" and hailed both her acting and singing as "nervous, questing, insatiable, readily aroused to a fury beyond any spurned woman known to history." Herbert F. Peyser in Musical America noted her "mass of flaming copper hair" and saluted her bright metallic voice and vitality that enabled her to "override the heaviest dynamics and penetrate the densest textures of the sumptuous orchestration." With Fritz Reiner (in his own Met debut) conducting in a focused, uninflected manner, her rendition is chilling in its detached brilliance and immediacy that the Earl of Harewood likened to Jascha Heifetz's violin style. Her depiction of Salome is of an aloof, coldly calculating princess, whose pure tone admits no hint of grace or doubt to intrude upon a tightly-focused temperament, an approach that melds well with Reiner's reputation for nuanced precision. Fortunately, we also have complete live recordings of 1949 and 1952 Welitsch/Reiner/Met productions. Tim Ashley in the Guardian hailed the CD release of the latter as "one of the most famous – and most disturbing – of all operatic performances," citing "Welitsch's chillingly girlish tone and matchless ability to make the text sound utterly obscene [and] create an unnervingly realistic portrayal of a sexually aware, manipulative teenager whose emotions are out of control" and saluted Reiner as "the greatest of all Straussians, drag[ging] us kicking and screaming into a world fraught with neurotic tension and psychological violence." Inge Borkh sings Salome (RCA LP cover)

The 1949 version has brighter sound and catches Welitsch in fresher voice, but both provide exceptional object lessons in vocal acting. Experts have acclaimed both as the greatest Salomes on record.

Another highly renowned closing scene was again led by Reiner in late 1955, this time for RCA with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Inge Borkh, who sings in a rich, quavering voice. Known as much for her acting as her singing, her more shaded tone and expression is matched by the warmer ambiance Reiner provides, abetted by the early stereo recording, which spreads the accompaniment over a convincing soundstage to achieve a sense of atmosphere and display subtleties of orchestration beyond the reach of a single channel to convey. Borkh, too, left us a celebrated complete Met performance. While Dmitri Mitropoulos leads tempestuous orchestral interludes, the sustained intensity (partly a function of heavy dynamic compression) brooks no chance for respite or a hint of tenderness, even as Salome first marvels over the Prophet's body and tenderly (if perversely) basks in contemplation of her kiss in the finale. Indeed, Borkh's unflagging huge voice seems downright Wagnerian and too lush – more a worldly Brünhilde than a raw adolescent, albeit a driven one.

In considering complete recordings of Salome, I tend to focus on the conductor, Salome and Herod if only by default, as the other major roles seem mostly one-dimensional and thus present little opportunity for interpretive personality – the Captain of the Guard Narraboth is hopelessly stricken with Salome but bound by duty, the Page constantly warns him of the disastrous consequences of his forbidden desire, Herodias is relentlessly driven by disgust for her husband and maniacal hatred of Jokanaan, who, in turn, prophesizes with inflexible ideology (except for a brief ecstatic vision in which he implores Salome to seek Christ). All are rendered quite well, if predictably, in all the recordings I've heard. At the other extreme, interpreters of Salome are faced with the daunting, if not inherently impossible, task of depicting a character who evolves in the course of an hour's real time from bewildered to lustful, manipulative, cruel and finally deranged. The comprehensive Operadis website lists 79 complete Salome recordings as of 2009 of which I've focused on studio renditions. The following headnotes list: the conductor; the singers of Salome, Herod, Jokanaan, Herodias; the orchestra (the original label, the year of first issue).

This was the first complete Salome to have been released. Needless to say, that in itself is significant, as the full force of the finale can truly be felt only as the culmination of the rest, rather than as a free-standing set piece. Goltz was famed for this role and was known for her range, volume and intensity. Although spared the need for such stamina here, she routinely did the Dance herself, although it undoubtedly helped that she had been born into a family of acrobats and trained as a dancer before turning to singing. Moralt conducts Salome (Philips LP cover)

Moralt conducts Salome (Philips LP cover)

Keilberth conducts Salome(Oceanic LP cover)

Her apostrophe is especially chilling, as she intones her depraved lines in a pure, sweet girlish timbre, adding an uncommon layer of perversion to a complex portrait of a brat way out of her depth. Like most of the singers and conductors in Salome recordings, Keilberth was known as a Wagner interpreter. Yet as an extension of the stylistic example of Strauss's own recording, and fully consistent with Goltz's approach, the entire production displays crystalline diction sufficient to imply characterization without sacrificing the emotional content, compromising the musical flow or breaking a musical line, thus treading a subtle edge between the classicism of Mozartean influence and the modern toxicity of the plot. The sound has remarkable clarity for its age and source. Actually a recorded radio broadcast, it benefits from the continuity of a live performance without expending the considerable energy required for staging and the inevitable resulting problems of balance. It also boasts the pedigree of having emanated from Dresden, where the premiere had been given.

Perhaps because both conductor and cast had primarily local (albeit worthy) reputations, this recording is often overlooked. Yet it is significant as the very first studio recording of Salome. It also boasts a special pedigree of its own – Moralt was Strauss's nephew, although biographies do not suggest a strong professional bond. His brief discography focuses on Wagner (including a complete recorded Ring) and Mozart (three complete operas) – a suitable blend for Salome, as his fleet timing creates a propulsive sense of inevitability while conveying the density of the music, despite an overly bright recording. As chief conductor at the Vienna State Opera from 1940 to 1958, Moralt focused his energies on restoring the excellence of that famed ensemble, and so it seems appropriate that he didn't feel compelled to populate his cast with outside stars. The voices are credible if not especially distinguished, but that serves to keep the production on a human scale. Volume is used creatively to reflect the balance of personalities – thus, Salome's repeated demands for the prophet's head are constantly buried beneath Herod's desperate attempts to dissuade her, and her final line is not the usual lung-busting, ringing triumph but withers in exhausted ambivalence. A rudimentary sound effect (the earliest I've encountered among Salome recordings) adds echo when Salome first peers down into the cistern and to Jokanaan's lines from within it. Incidentally, as if to emphasize the need to apply one's own critical perspective and to take professional views with a proverbial grain of salt, two Musical America reviews of Wegner's 1952 Met appearances (in Strauss's Elektra) generated vastly different reactions – Robert Sabine hailed her blazing intensity, while Cecil Smith asserted "Nature's firm intention that she restrict herself to music that is gentler."

Of all the Salome conductors on record, Krauss had the closest relationship to Strauss, as he prepared the premieres of three late operas under the composer's direction, wrote the libretto for Capriccio and recorded the first full set of the tone poems (after Strauss's own series). Thus it seems appropriate that this Salome, his penultimate recording, combines the conventional style of the late Strauss operas with the lush romanticism of the Strauss tone poems, abetted by the famed opulent sound of the Vienna Philharmonic. Solti conducts Salome (London LP cover)

The Dance, shorn of its ingrained edge, is especially smooth and silky, and perhaps all the more creepy by hiding its undertone of depravity beneath an aura of alluring charm. Elsewhere, though, the sting needed to fully convey the expressionist impact is veiled beneath glossy execution and the final chords are bereft of their needed shock. Goltz, sounding considerably more mature than in 1948, is both more expressive (as when she whispers her anxiety waiting for the executioner to perform) and grand, culminating in a sumptuous apostrophe brimming with beauty and splendor that is all the more unsettling in contrast to the chilling tale. Julius Patzak renders Herod with a wide range of expression, from barely stylized speech to full song.

This first stereo Salome was produced by the same team of soprano, orchestra, conductor and technical crew that was in the midst of crafting the first stereo Ring. In accompanying notes, the engineers boasted that their innovation of "resonance control" (i.e., precise control of acoustics) was "the greatest single development in recorded opera since the inception of stereophonic sound." While that may seem dubious nowadays, they were writing when stereo itself was barely a decade old. Even so, their achievement remains stunning, with an astounding balance of vibrant atmosphere, incisive detail and sheer sonic power. (I can't vouch for various CD transfers – I'm sticking with my near-mint original vinyl set that sounds sensational.) The orchestral impression is rich with gripping bass yet blazing with sharp, vivid highlights, precisely balanced against the voices so as to overwhelm them at dramatically appropriate times. Astride it all is Nilsson, whose awesome purity, breath control and sheer power affords her the luxury of exquisite coloring and subtlety without a hint of strain or compromising her mesmerizing presence that dominates every moment she is heard and reverberates in the interstices. Her interview with Jokanaan begins as beguiled and evolves into a hair-raising confrontation. When she pleads with Herod for the prophet's head she lets him dominate, never raising her voice above patient, insistent conversation throughout his hysterics, yet we know from her first confident, hypnotic note who will prevail. Her apostrophe, resplendent with tonal beauty and effortless vocal production, paints a portrait of self-assured triumph, a Brünhilde oblivious to all else and set on an inexorable course toward her own destiny. Her final lines are barely audible until the very end, drawing us deeply one final time into her sick, eerie, private world. Even a half-century later, it's hard to imagine a more thrilling, visceral Salome (or a scarier cover!).

Like the Moralt, this set, too, is often overlooked, perhaps because East German imports weren't keenly sought in the West at the height of the Cold War. A Krauss student, Suitner has a fine feel for the score – objective but never dull, letting the inherent drama develop with minimal personal input and a superb balance that conveys all the instrumental splendor without ever calling attention to itself. Not only the Dance, but other orchestral passages (notably Jokanaan emerging from and returning to the cistern) are atmospheric, propulsive and hugely effective, spiced by rousing timpani. (An unusual benevolent touch – the Jews' quarrel sounds more like a heated discussion than a mean-spirited fight, and he eliminates altogether their silly cries of "Oh, oh, oh" when Herod, in desperation but to no avail, offers Salome the veil of the tabernacle if she will spare Jokanaan.) Yet while the supporting cast of relative unknowns is decent enough, the result remains deeply flawed. Salome, after all, is Salome. Leinsdorf conducts Salome (RCA LP cover)

Leinsdorf conducts Salome (RCA LP cover)

Suitner conducts Salome (Berlin Classics CD cover)

In her third studio recording (no other soprano boasts even two), Goltz has lost the character, appeal and control of her former outings and instead shakes all her held notes with fearsome tremolo and sounds like an aging diva. Her sheer power remains and dominates throughout, but judging from her voice alone (as we must), she could never be mistaken for a youthful innocent prone to corruption, nor bend the captain of the guard, let alone Herod, to her will, but rather merely shouts them all down, even in the crucial scene when she repeatedly demands the Prophet's head, neither steadfastly nor with rising intensity, and during the final oration she sounds merely exhausted rather than exulting in triumph. Despite an inflated stereo spread, the sonic fidelity is convincing, although for some reason Herod is miked with an annoying metallic overtone and other voices are heard with curiously different degrees of presence.

The Solti production was a formidable act to follow, but if it seems too garish or extreme then this rendition should amply satisfy. Leinsdorf's career began in opera, where he trained under both Toscanini and Walter, and thus brings a compelling blend of his mentors' meticulous precision and atmospheric empathy that tends to flow smoothly rather than in edgy fits. Appropriately, RCA's sonics are far more natural than Decca's (here, too, I'm judging from vinyl) yet with creative details. Thus, to add echo for the cistern Milnes sang into a large metallic exhaust hood over a stove in the venue kitchen. Much of Herod's lines, even when agitated, are nestled within the instrumentation, as if to depict him as a petty man, impotent to control his surroundings, much less his wife or daughter. Caballé, renowned for bel canto, renders a warm and deeply moving apostrophe in which we can sense human emotions within the horrifying context, as if an ardent lover was pouring out her innermost cravings to an absent object of irresistible desire. Overall, this remains a fine, idiomatic realization that grows with familiarity. In 1977 Caballé cut the finale for DG with Bernstein and the Orchestre National de France; as would be expected it's vastly different, propelled by the conductor's trademark muscular force and bursting with overt vehemence.

Technically not a studio recording, this was cobbled from live performances and rehearsals, but unlike others it was planned for commercial release and made by a major label on professional equipment with a hushed audience and minimal stage noise. Bohm was an associate of Strauss, the dedicatee of his 1938 opera Daphne, and known for reliable, stable renditions with due attention to detail, and an extra dollop of energy outside the studio. Here, at age 76, he's commendably brisk, although the voices' higher level and sharper presence elevates their sense of drama at the expense of the orchestra, whose contributions sound muted by comparison, with the Dance especially deflated. Karajan conducts Salome (EMI LP cover)

Jones is a Wagnerian soprano, but with a lighter voice and wider emotional range to fulfill the perceptive psychological vision of the producer August Everding, who considers Salome to be "a white dove with a young, innocent girl's tendency toward depravity [who] has learned to so despise her mother's unchastity that she confronts men with chaste superiority until one man confronts her with chaste superiority of his own," "a closed white flower … exposed to the rays of a dazzling sun – Jokanaan, whose rejection of her advances awakens her so that the flower opens and perishes." Jones's finale, in particular, is uncommonly sweet and thus all the more perverse. Fischer-Dieskau is largely wasted in the role of the Prophet, which demands little of his trademarked sensitivity and heartfelt expression. The booklet with the LP set provides a fascinating comparison between the libretto and the full original French text of Wilde's play (and an English translation), conveniently marked to indicate the portions Strauss cut or altered.

In keeping with his reputation for control and highly-polished precision, Karajan leads with a rather attenuated, leisurely-paced feeling of mystery that suggests ancient legend – until the final scene, which blooms into full- blown romanticism. Others praise the reading as sensual or even ironic, but I wouldn't go quite that far; rather, although certainly avoiding both the calculated objectivity of much of Karajan's work as well as the electric excitement of others', sonorities are richly blended, with sufficient detail but without calling undue attention to the components, and the orchestral contribution largely is content to serve as accompaniment, as it would be in the opera house pit, leaving the singers to characterize their roles. (Although produced and released by EMI, the technical crew was Decca's, and the result, with substantial emphasis on the mid-range, differed from their customary emphatic sound.) Behrens, a Karajan discovery making her debut on records, was already 40 at the time and sounds warm and expressive, but manages to kindle considerable charm as she lures Narraboth into letting Jokanaan out of the cistern, and then just as easily turns it off when her mood darkens.

After a considerable drought, 1990 brought a bounty of no fewer than three studio Salomes. Expert opinions on these tend to be more amusing than revealing, as each variously praises a different one at the expense of the others, but perhaps the lack of a consensus is warranted by their distinctive natures and appeal. Sinopoli conducts Salome (DG CD cover)

Ozawa conducts Salome (Philips CD cover)

Norman's light vibrato hints at youthfulness toward the top of her wide range (and spares us the full diva treatment at the end), but her creamy, near-mezzo tone predominates and denies much sense of evolution (and, in an unusual role reversal, sounds deeper than her mother). She's especially convincing when singing of dark things (peering into the cistern; pondering the Prophet's hair). Yet the sheer luster of her tone and phrasing is intoxicating, although it tends to negate characterization and often overpowers the accompaniment, once again by the Dresden forces, this time led by Ozawa, who often seems more dutiful than engaged. Mehta, while more responsive, unleashes the accustomed excellence of the Berlin Philharmonic during the orchestral passages of Jokanaan's return to the cistern and a fine, moody Dance seething with delicacy and grace, but otherwise largely hides beneath the voices. Marton, though, from the outset is far more matronly than vulnerable or impressionable and tends to blunt any sense of atmosphere or psychic progression. In my personal favorite of the 1990 crop of Salomes, Sinopoli, known for his deeply intellectual approach to music and his sensitivity to textures, crafts radiant support for the variegated expressive breadth of Studer, who shapes every word with dramatic purpose and conversational ease, especially in softer passages in which she demands our attention more than in overly insistent segments and constantly contrasts her placid textures to Herod's hysterics and Jokanaan's stentorian moralizing. As in the Bohm LP box, the CD booklet compares Wilde's full original text with Strauss's abridged libretto. The sonic allure of all three of these sets is terrific.

Dohnányi leads the Vienna Philharmonic in yet another studio Salome in a surprisingly relaxed and steady (one might say featureless) reading, complete with a rather perfunctory Dance, far from the expected dynamism one might expect from a student of Bernstein and Solti. Even so, uncommon details emerge here and there – ironic dreamy arpeggios as Herod rhapsodizes over Salome's request for a silver platter before he learns what she wants on it, and a dynamic voicing of the spooky "Salome chord" before her final lines. Mackerras conducts Salome (Chandos CD cover)

Mackerras conducts Salome (Chandos CD cover)

Dohnanyi conducts Salome (Decca CD cover)

Yet, I can't help but feel that a more vivid approach is needed, especially nowadays, in order to impart even a small measure of the essential shock that Salome generated in its time (and that the composer clearly intended). By slighting the orchestral contribution, Dohnányi relegates the dominant role to the vocals, as seems proper in any opera. Fortunately, Maltifano impresses as a fine singing actress, with a warbling voice that, unlike Goltz in 1963, she uses expressively for tightly-wound nervous energy (and with a lighter texture) for an apt portrayal of a girl who ventures way beyond the scope of her shallow adolescent emotional depth. Despite her ability to unleash full power, she often exercises considerable restraint and manages to exude plausible allure.

Issued 14 years after the prior studio Salome, the Mackerras set serves to raise two related questions. First, in light of the economic pressures that increasingly threaten the traditional model for recording major works, will there be any more studio Salomes? And, second, given the added inspiration captured in most concert presentations and the enhanced experience afforded by video, does it even matter? But those are questions for another day.

The facts, references and quotations in this article are taken from the following sources. Unless otherwise noted, I'll take the credit – and blame – for the musical judgments.