Running time: 135 mins
Live Opera
Music Director Yannick Nzet-Sguin conducts his first Met performances of Strausss white-hot one-act tragedy, which receives its first new production at the company in 20 years. Claus Guth, one of Europes leading opera directors, gives the biblical storyalready filtered through the beautiful and strange imagination of Oscar Wildes playa 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 antiheroine, who demands the head of Jochanaan, sung by celebrated baritone Peter Mattei. Tenor Gerhard Siegel is Salomes lecherous stepfather, King Herod, with mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as his wife, Herodias, and tenor Piotr Buszewski as Narraboth. Derrick Inouye conducts two performances in May.