SALOME to Open Seattle Opera's 2026/27 Season at McCaw Hall

Seattle Opera will open the 2026/27 season with Salome, Richard Strauss and Oscar Wilde's lurid portrait of lust, decadence, and corruption. Salome returns to Seattle Opera for the first time since 2002, with the same exhilarating edge it had when it premiered in 1905.

“It's about time we put Salome back on stage to give people the chance to experience this white-knuckle ride,” said General and Artistic Director James Robinson. “Salome is a remarkable, harrowing piece of theater that shows off opera's spooky side, which we don't always see often enough. Between the electrifying singing and the virtuoso playing of the Seattle Symphony, Salome is a thrill ride from beginning to end.”

Salome set out to scandalize from the beginning. Based on a play by celebrated Irish playwright and aesthete Oscar Wilde, the opera doubled down on Wilde's salacious text with some of the most audacious music that had ever been heard on the opera stage. The story concerns the Judean princess Salome, stepdaughter of the biblical tetrarch Herod Antipas and his wife Herodias, as she becomes dangerously fixated on the body of John the Baptist, who is a prisoner of Herod's court. When he spurns her advances, Salome demands the prophet's head on a silver platter and kisses his lifeless lips.

The play was banned in London until 1931, and the opera was prohibited from premiering in Vienna and pulled from The Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1907 after just one performance. But opera audiences have been enthralled ever since, simultaneously spellbound and repulsed by the enigmatic antiheroine.

“Salome is a unique and fascinating character because she embodies both feminine and masculine qualities,” said soprano Brenda Rae, who returns to Seattle Opera for the first time since Semele in 2015. “She objectifies a man and she's objectified as a woman. She's able to turn that attention back on the men around her, to serve back the creepiness she gets from her stepfather. While Salome is certainly a departure from my typical repertoire, I'm excited for the opportunity to explore this complicated and contradictory character.”

“I have always loved this piece, from the moment I first heard it,” said Stage Director Bruno Ravella, who opened this production at Irish National Opera in 2024 before taking it to the Teatro Massimo in Palermo in 2025. “It stages the confrontation between opposing worlds: the decadent and the austere, the viewer and the viewed, the Old Testament and the New. Our production emphasizes the trajectory from dream to nightmare, juxtaposing the luminous but claustrophobic Eden at the start of the opera with Salome's final act of liberation through death. That journey allows us to foreground the dysfunctional dynamics that ultimately drive her to her monstrous, yet ecstatic, surrender.”

Cast and Creative Team

Joining soprano Brenda Rae (Salome) on the cast are eight Seattle Opera debuts, including tenor Chad Shelton as Herod, baritone Michael Kupfer-Radecky as Jochanaan (a.k.a. John the Baptist), mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano as Herodias, and tenor Joseph Tancredi as Narraboth. The extensive supporting cast includes mezzo-soprano Hannah Ludwig as the Page of Herodias, bass Scott Conner as First Nazarene/First Soldier, tenor Robert Stahley as First Jew, tenor Zhengyi Bai as Fourth Jew, and soprano Alexa Jarvis as An Attendant. Returning to Seattle Opera are baritone Michael J. Hawk as Second Nazarene/A Cappadocian, tenor Martin Bakari as Second Jew, tenor John Marzano as Third Jew, and bass-baritone Nathan Stark as Fifth Jew/Second Soldier.

Conductor Benjamin Manis makes his Seattle Opera debut leading 81 members of the Seattle Symphony. Joining him on the creative team is Wigs, Hair, and Makeup Manager & Designer Ashlee Naegle, along with five more Seattle Opera debuts: Stage Director Bruno Ravella, Associate Director & Associate Choreographer Carmine De Amicis, Original Choreographer Liz Roche, Scenery & Costume Designer Leslie Travers, and Lighting Designer Malcolm Rippeth.

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