A dancing princess, a prophet whose head ends up on a silver platter—yes, it’s time for another spin with Salome, the Biblical shocker that put Richard Strauss on the operatic map. Directors trip all over themselves to make the scandal new, few with the assurance of David McVicar. His classic, now 15-year-old staging for the Royal Opera House, unfolds in the decadent 1930s of the Italian Fascists. The notorious Dance of the Seven Veils plays out not as the striptease of cliché but as a psychodrama of pedophilia remembered, enacted stage by stage in seven separate rooms. Malin Byström takes the part of Salome, a Lolita avant la lettre. Jordan Shanahan appears as the implacable John the Baptist. The conductor, Alexander Soddy, is no household name, but scouts with sharp ears are raving about him. In a score by turns as volcanic and iridescent as this one, he’s bound to make an impression. —Matthew Gurewitsch