Salome

…his first operatic success with Salome, based on Oscar Wilde’s play. Although Salome was regarded by some as blasphemous and obscene, it triumphed in all the major opera houses except Vienna, where the censor forbade Gustav Mahler to stage it.

…both shocking in their time: Salome (1905; libretto taken from Oscar Wilde’s drama, translated into German by Hedwig Lachmann) and Elektra (1909). With the latter work Strauss began a long and fruitful association with the poet and dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal as his librettist. Couched in a powerful harmonic idiom,…

…in November 1907; Richard Strauss’s Salomé, in which she created a sensation; Henri Février’s Monna Vanna; and Italo Montemezzi’s L’amore dei tre re. She was acclaimed not only for her brilliant and highly individual singing but also for her remarkable dramatic ability. She joined the Chicago Civic Opera in 1910…