Vor Sonnenaufgang and Ubu Roi scandalized their publics because they drew attention with blatantly offensive language to aspects of fin-de-siècle society that, while readily evident, were assiduously ignored by all: the alcoholism, the sexual improprieties, the greed, the violence, and others. Two works of the following decade used, in contrast, the language of music to expose more deeply rooted elements of human nature and culture.

FEMME DE SIÈCLE (WILDE/STRAUSS'S SALOME)

Almost precisely a century before the Berlin Idomeneo, another decapitated head on stage aroused worldwide scandal—this time not the imagined indignation of Muslims over the head of Muhammad but the real outrage of Christians over the head of John the Baptist. The affair began auspiciously. The premiere of Richard Strauss's Salome in the Dresden Royal Opera on December 9, 1905, which featured that head, was “a sensational success.” Following the performance and a stunned silence the applause lasted over a quarter-hour, and the audience, including what a contemporary newspaper report called “the European elite of artistically interested spectators,” such as Serge Rachmaninoff and Arturo Toscanini, summoned the soloists along with Strauss and the conductor, Ernst von Schuch, for curtain calls almost forty times. A day later, the Dresdner Nachrichten reported that “our Hofoper has not enjoyed a sensation of similar significance since Wagner's last works.” Strauss himself wrote to the conductor that he was hugely pleased with “the colossal success of Salome.”