There is always something cathartic in Richard Strauss’s “Salome.” Perhaps it’s the portrayal of a woman’s wrath which is not entirely unjustified, given the seething remarks of her ill-fated love interest, in turn not so far off from how men talk to women on the site formerly known as Twitter these days. Perhaps it’s the ultimate comeuppance of a gaggle of despotic partygoers, decked in all their finery while the days of the Messiah—which is to say, the days of change—are at hand. “Salome” hasn’t been staged at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 20 years, and the fact that the staging it’s chosen to revive is Sir David McVicar’s, set in fascist Italy, is…timely. The production, which debuted on a snowy January 25, reorients the opera away from extreme sensuality, and towards an utter frankness about elite entitlement. In this interpretation, the fate of a man (and in the grand scheme of things it matters little if he is holy or not) is predicated on the vagaries of an indulgent coterie of captains, kings, and princesses.
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