Salomé

Oscar Wilde’s one-act play Salomé (published 1893; first performed 1896) was translated by Hedwig Lachmann as the libretto for Richard Strauss’s one-act opera of the same name (first produced 1905), in which Herod is portrayed as lusting after Salome, while Salome, in her turn, desires John the Baptist; she…

…rehearsals of his macabre play Salomé, written in French and designed, as he said, to make his audience shudder by its depiction of unnatural passion, were halted by the censor because of a law that prohibited plays containing biblical characters. (In the Bible, Salome is the daughter of Herodias and…

…(1894) for Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé won him widespread notoriety. He was greatly influenced by the elegant, curvilinear style of Art Nouveau and the bold sense of design found in Japanese woodcuts. But what startled his critics and the public alike was the obvious sensuality of the women in his…

Although his play Salomé (published 1893) was banned during rehearsals, Wilde’s greatest literary success came in the theater with a series of light, epigrammatic comedies of manners: Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and