Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium to conduct Strauss’s one-act incendiary and powerful tragedy in MET Opera Live: Salome.

MET Opera Live: Salome is derived from a brief biblical account. A young princess of Judea dances for her stepfather Herod. She chooses as her reward the head of the prophet John the Baptist.

This subject captured the imaginations of generations of visual artists, but its full possibilities were perhaps best realized in Oscar Wilde’s 1891 tragedy. This was banned from performance in several countries.

Strauss’s score combines the grandeur of Wagner’s epics with the focus and emotional punch of the short Italian verismo operas.

In this 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. Swedish baritone Peter Mattei plays the imprisoned prophet Jochanaan.

German tenor Gerhard Siegel is Salome’s lecherous stepfather, King Herod; American mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung is his wife, Herodias. Polish tenor Piotr Buszewski stars as Narraboth.