Getting Ahead

Strauss' Artistic Sacrifice

This caricature of Richard Strauss by Oskar Garvens appeared shortly after the world premiere of his opera Salome in Dresden in December 1905. The cartoon parodies the work’s final scene, in which the demented Princess Salome strips herself naked before the severed head of John the Baptist, performs an erotic dance, caresses it, then kisses the dead pro…