From the play in which Oscar Wilde tells his own version of the biblical story of Salome, who falls hopelessly in love with John the Baptist, Richard Strauss composed a striking dramatic opera that premiered in 1905. For this Metropolitan Opera production, broadcast in the Grand Auditorium, the German director Claus Guth, a specialist in, and awarded for, his approaches to the operas of R. Strauss, was called in. Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts this Salome, which materialises on stage in the enchanting body and voice of soprano Elza van den Heever.