Strauss’s Salome

Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium on May 17 to conduct Strauss’s one-act tragedy, which will be transmitted live from the Metropolitan Opera stage to cinemas worldwide. Leading the company’s first new production of the work in 20 years, Claus Guth, one of Europe’s leading opera directors, gives the biblical story a psychologically perceptive Victorian-era setting. South African soprano Elza van den Heever leads a celebrated cast as the abused and unhinged antiheroine, with Swedish baritone Peter Mattei as the imprisoned prophet Jochanaan; German tenor Gerhard Siegel as Salome’s lecherous stepfather, King Herod; American mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as his wife, Herodias; and Polish tenor Piotr Buszewski as Narraboth.