Venge-moi d'une supreme offense!... Herode! Ne me refuse pas (Herodiade)

Massenet built Hérodiade on Flaubert's short story Hérodias and offered it first to the Paris Opéra, which refused it; the premiere took place instead at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels on 19 December 1881. His librettists reshaped the Gospel account into a triangle of desire: Salomé loves Jean, Hérodiade demands his death, and Hérode wants Salomé without knowing whose daughter she is. Church authorities objected to the subject for years afterwards. The score joins oriental colour and long-breathed melody to a drama in which private jealousy, not prophecy, decides the outcome.