Do you know what you want?

I watched Strauss’ Salome last night and I’m still not sure what to make of it…

I went to the Met expecting something grand, maybe even overwrought — the kind of operatic excess that verges on parody. After all, it was written by Oscar Wilde. And parts of it were. The special effects, and especially their use of shadows was so well thought out. But what stayed with me wasn’t the spectacle. It wasn’t even the famous Dance of the Seven Veils, though that too was rather surreal. I was expecting the sexy kind, not the trauma assortment. The unveiling felt more like uncloching a dish, except that it was cold. Aggressive. Cruel. Not so much nourishment, but a dare — and maybe that was the intention. What lingered was the horror embedded in the bargain.

“Dance for me, Salomé, I beseech you. If you dance for me you may ask of me what you will, and I will give it you, even unto the half of my kingdom.” - Oscar Wilde

On the surface, it’s almost absurdly simple. A transactional universe. Performance, desire, reward. But watching it unfold, I found myself quite unsettled. There’s something deeply disturbing about the clarity of that exchange, because beneath it is a kind of erasure. Who has power in that moment? Herod, obviously... it’s his offer. But Salome too, briefly. She wields her body, her allure, as currency. She plays the game. And yet what she asks for isn’t pleasure, riches, or even love. It’s death. It’s revenge. It’s obliteration.

That’s the part I can’t quite shake (apart from the necrophilia).

The bargain isn’t really transactional at all. Or rather, it is… in the coldest, cruelest way. Salome plays by the rules of a world that taught her desire is power, only to turn that logic inside out. She dances, she asks, and she receives. But what she receives destroys everything. Jokanaan, of course. Herod’s fragile control. And finally herself.

So what is it, really? A fable about transactional desire? A cautionary tale about what happens when power and longing collapse into violence? Or something even murkier — a portrait of a woman trying to exert agency in a world that reduces her to performance?

I’ve been brushing up on Faust lately (I’ll be watching Heartbeat Opera’s production soon) and maybe that’s why this struck harder. The bargain. The clarity of the offer. The terrible weight of asking and receiving.

I’m not sure. That’s the honest answer. Maybe that’s why it lingers. Because Salome, in the end, isn’t about desire fulfilled. It’s about desire devoured. About the bargain no one really wins.

Or maybe it’s about something simpler still. Not just be careful what you ask for, but that asking, itself, is never innocent. Every desire carries a price.

In Faust, it’s knowledge and transcendence.

In Salome, it’s desire and destruction.

Different currencies, same ledger. The same ancient hunger, dressed in different names.

But in the end, why does Faust get a redemption arc whereas Salome gets reduced to a cautionary tale? I keep circling back to that.

Faust — learned, restless, powerful — makes his bargain with open eyes. He gambles with eternity and still, somehow, is granted grace. Salome, barely even 16, sheltered and shaped by a will not entirely her own (perhaps her mother’s?), makes hers and is swallowed whole.

Different rules, it seems. Different allowances.

One man’s ambition becomes tragic yearning, worth saving. One girl’s fury becomes monstrous, and she’s silenced.

I’m not sure which unsettles me more… the brutality of her fate, or how familiar that pattern feels.