"Why Didn't You Look at Me, Jochanaan?". Four Short Essays on Richard Strauss's "Salome"

Abstract

This essay aims to explore the complex aesthetic, musical, and dramaturgical reasons behind the enduring relevance of Richard Strauss's "Salome", more than a century after its premiere. The opera is analyzed through four main axes, each corresponding to a thematic mini-essay: the body and the gaze, numerical structure and solitude, space and conscience, and finally, the dichotomy between innocence and the 'femme fatale'. The objective is to highlight how "Salome", while grounded in a structure firmly rooted in tradition, manages to introduce a disturbing modernity, expressed above all in the centrality of the female body and the unsettling power of the gaze. Furthermore, the opera is interpreted as a theatrical and psychological laboratory in which music—laden with material sensuality and synesthetic layering—becomes a vehicle for contradictory impulses, often on the edge of the inexpressible.