Why it is ‘Sing -0 – Long Opera !
With ‘audience participation’ at appropriate moments.They can even have a bouncing ball, dobbing along the projected surtitles. I’m ready listen…………………” Keill vartt Voman”. It is so easy.

Of course, this particular feature of the production can be explained in different ways:

- someone ‘in the story’, perhaps an example of the traditional patriarchal society who isn’t convinced by her words as Jochanaan is and actually wants Salome dead.

- a stereotypical audience member, digruntled by the happy end, who wants his traditional ending. In this option, Konwitschny would seem to be cleverly anticipating reactions by traditionalist.

A friend of mine who attended the dress rehearsal told me that Herod does not get his last line, and only AFTER the last bars of music have ended (so after the moment Herod would have spoken/sung them), someone from the auditorium/audience calls out (in Dutch): “kill her, kill that woman!”

The sheer elegance and humble simplicity of this solution is mind-blowing, isn’t it?

Johanann , along with all the rest of Herods’ court is unfeeling, to what Salome ‘the child’ wants. Worse, she experiences his total rejection on more levels than just sexual desire. She mocks and tries to tease him yet at the same time : incapable of comprehending what he represents, says, or stands for. Narraboth desired her, yet we see her nonchalant response when he kills himself.
Salome is the ‘black widow’ spider in training – spawn of her mother, ready to show off to ‘mother’. Herod , even hints at that style of metaphor: about ‘indeed’- being the daughter of Heriodias . Men are to be ensnared in a web, and then devoured. The fearful Herod The ‘web’ dungeon floor grille is symbolic, in regard to Johanann.It is the only way such women can feel empowered in such a corrupt environment. Some productions ( I.E. the Mc Vicar one) even hint that Herod has previously possibly had ‘ a crack’ at his step-daughter. That is valid and can help explain her unflinching vengeful total humiliation of Herod … ‘at all costs’. Since Salome , to ‘satisfy’ the dismemberment of her prized toy (only has a head left!) she abuses it ‘every which way’, talks to it, cuddles it. She is now just a mad babbling homicidal child with her wished -for but destroyed object.

I heard her sing Senta rather horribly – squally and shrieky – with Welsh National Opera (opposite Wales’s own Bryn T) so I wasn’t in a hurry to hear her Isolde. My mistake apparently as she got very good reviews and I heard nothing but excellent reports. Since then, she’s sung Isolde in Cologne.

Unless, Salome imagines riding off into the sunset with Jochanaan as she lies dying.

How does Konwitschny reconcile his concept with the opera’s last line?

Will Herod never learn?

And people still are perplexed when concepts like this get booed.