Claus Guth's 'Salome' Opens at Polish National Opera on Nov. 22, 2026

The Polish National Opera opens a new production of Richard Strauss's "Salome" in Warsaw on Nov. 22, 2026, running through Dec. 13, 2026. The staging comes from director Claus Guth, developed in collaboration with Teatro Real Madrid. Monika Radecka and Tomasz Konieczny lead a cast that also includes Gerhard Siegel, Nadine Lehner, and Granit Musliu.

Yoel Gamzou conducts. The production marks his first new staging as music director of the Polish National Opera, a milestone for the company's incoming artistic leadership and a test of how the house positions Strauss in its repertoire.

How does Guth read the biblical story?

Guth approaches the one-act music drama as a multilayered psychological tale of obsession, desire, and the search for one's voice. His version departs from the ending audiences know.

"In my version there is a sort of a happy ending," Guth said in a statement. "Herod's final sentence, 'Kill that woman,' is not carried out. In the end, this closed, dark world opens, and Salome steps into a future. What I want to say is that there is a chance to find your own way and free yourself from all the influences, no matter how traumatic."

The revision reframes the work around survival rather than destruction. It gives the title character an exit from a court that the source material seals shut.

What does Gamzou hear in the score?

The conductor places Strauss in a narrow pantheon of theatrical composers, and he ranks "Salome" at the top of the form.

"I have always admired Strauss for being one of the greatest theatrical composers that ever lived," Gamzou said. "Up there with Mozart, Puccini and Bernstein's West Side Story, I think Salome is probably the most perfect piece of music-theatre ever composed."

He hears the score as drama in itself, not decoration. "The orchestra is the main character in the score, and every note is there not just to illustrate or decorate, but to drive the plot forward," he said. "Every instrument has an emotion, a character, a reason to tell a story like the singers on stage."

Gamzou traces the work's lineage from Wagner's leitmotif tradition, where every character had a musical theme, and argues that Strauss went further: every mood and every emotion receives its own leitmotif.

He also credits the opera with setting a durable model of dramatic compression. "Ever since Salome, one of the shortest and most captivating, fast-paced operas ever written, composers aspire to the 'Salome 100 minutes' – the perfect duration for a thrilling piece of music-theatre," he said.

What does this change for Warsaw's opera audience?

The run offers local audiences a Guth staging already vetted by a major European partner, Teatro Real Madrid, and a first look at Gamzou's interpretive priorities as music director. The five named soloists, headed by Radecka and Konieczny, carry a score that leaves no room for concealment across roughly 100 minutes. The Warsaw performances, from Nov. 22 through Dec. 13, 2026, will show whether Guth's rewritten ending earns the conviction his statement claims for it.