In December 1905 Richard Strauss’s opera Salome—blasphemous and obscene in its libretto, fiercely dissonant in its music—had its scandalous premiere in Dresden, and Franz Lehár’s operetta The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe) was first performed in Vienna. Salome offered the shock of the modern in biblical dress (and undress)—it was banned from the Metropolitan Opera […]
Source : A Halo of Nostalgia
