Final Scene (Salome)

Strauss’s Salome emerged in an age fascinated by the conflict between asceticism and sensuality. The writings of Otto Weininger, Friedrich Nietzsche and August Strindberg shaped a cultural atmosphere of extremes, in which desire and repression confronted one another with unusual intensity. By bringing the hidden longings of that society onto the operatic stage through the story of the Judean princess, Strauss provoked outrage. The scandal was also a form of recognition: audiences were confronted with precisely the world of secret impulses that the age publicly resisted and privately awaited.