About the work
Opera in four acts by Jules Massenet after Gustave Flaubert's novella 'Hérodias' (1877), with a libretto by Paul Milliet and Henri Grémont (a pseudonym of Georges Hartmann). Because the management of the Paris Opéra considered the subject too sensitive, the work premiered instead on 19 December 1881 at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels.
Plot
King Herod desires the young Salomé, who herself loves the imprisoned prophet Jean and wants to save him from execution. Herod's wife Hérodiade, publicly accused by Jean of incest, forces his death. When Salomé then learns that Hérodiade is her own mother, she kills herself over Jean's body.
Cultural significance
Unlike Richard Strauss's later 'Salome', Massenet places the erotic obsession with Herod rather than with Salomé, whose feelings for Jean read as religious devotion rather than desire. Success in Brussels spread quickly: within two months the opera reached La Scala in Milan, and by the early 1890s it had even played in New Orleans.