Hot and seedy

Salome is my favourite opera by Richard Strauss, the only one where there is no danger, at any point, of his lapsing into good taste, which there is to some degree in all his other operas, even if only momentarily. With Salome, from the opening quiet clarinet slithering upwards, and the luckless young Syrian Narraboth, later in the work to stab himself to death without anyone noticing, remarking for the first of many times how beautiful the princess Salome is tonight, we know we are in for a mischievous orgy of lust and violence. The work’s chromaticism isn’t used to make particular expressive points but to create and sustain an atmosphere so hot and seedy that we are prepared for anything to happen. And Strauss rewards us always — in as fine a performance as the one we had in Leeds last week — in excess of expectation, however often we might have heard or seen the piece.