Salome review: Gruesome but brilliant

THE DRAMATIC story of Salome and her seductive Dance of the Seven Veils comes to us from various sources. Her dance, for which she was rewarded with the head of John the Baptist on a platter, is mentioned in the Gospels of both Matthew and Mark, though her name is absent from those accounts. The first century Roman historian Josephus was the first to tell us that she was called Salome, and that name formed the title of a powerful play by Oscar Wilde in 1892 which dramatically embellished the tale. That play formed the basis of the opera by Richard Strauss in 1905.