Performer: Boleslaw Barlog

The Deutsche Oper revives once again Boleslaw Barlog’s old production, with two outstanding singers at their debut in the house.

Gun-Brit Barkmin’s Salome was neither sexy, salacious, psycho-erotic nor particularly well sung.

Carole Wilson’s Herodias almost upstages Lise Lindstrom’s sexy Salome in a fine revival of Boleslaw Barlog's 1972 production in Vienna.

Though it has run for 45 years, the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s Tosca is both timeless and a relic. Stand-in tenor Stefano La Colla's impassioned performance drew a standing ovation. 

When Richard Strauss first wrote Salome, he was unable to get it performed in his home city of Vienna, so shocking was the material with its heavy eroticism and necrophiliac ending (the première was in Dresden). A century on, times are more permissive, and Salome features in the seasons both of Vienna's Volksoper and of the Staatsoper, where we saw it last night.