The 87th Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Festival starts with a new staging of Salome by Richard Strauss, his first operatic masterpiece that established him in the theatrical field: on the podium Alexander Soddy and directed by Emma Dante. The opera’s debut on 9 December 1905 at the Semperoper in Dresden was met with resounding success, bringing Strauss fame and honour. The literary source was Oscar Wilde’s play Salome, which the composer chose to set to music in Hedwig Bachmann’s German translation.
