Salome (Opera) (2025)

Two straight hours of music, without applause breaks, the new Met Opera production of Salome boasts a large 100-person orchestra. Yannick Nezet-Seguin is at the helm, his music stand glowing in gold. The music, like everything about the opera frankly, is wild. Richard Strauss got some bizarre sound effects out of the orchestra. The music is undoubtedly interesting. There are bits of melody, but no such arias really. It has the drama of Wagner without the beauty. Not intro level opera. The singing role of Salome is extremely demanding and Elza van den Heever sings it powerfully.

The production design has two levels, the palace upstairs and the cistern downstairs. When the scenes transition like an elevator, it's quite a sight to behold. The cistern is stark, but has a steep staircase and ominous shadows. There are small children playing younger/inner Salome; they just sit on stage observing. It's traumatizing. The little girls will never forget the severed head. It's all super creepy like a nightmare. The projections shimmer tricking the mind as though the floor moves--which of course it does. Some of the characters wear rams heads rather inexplicably. For much of the first act, they remain in the background coming on and off stage bandying around a woman in a bikini. There is a ram-man statue that they actually smash to pieces! They have budget to irreparably break props performance after performance.