Miranda Music Project video
Richard Strauss: Salome (1905) is an early and hyperromantic opera based on Hedwig Lachmann's German translation of the play by Oscar Wilde, which ventures into sexual fantasies and metaphors with the Biblical allegories. I saw it in Dallas in the early 1980s. Salome does her strip poker dance, and then demands the head of John the Baptist on a platter, and the decapitated head is shown, as in a horror film. The Herod has the guards kill Salome, as the opera ends abruptly on loud minor chords. Of course, underlying all of this is the idea that the Gospels did not really try to challenge the oppressive political system of the Romans.
Elektra (1909) is based on the Greek tragedy by Sophocles, which had become an "adaptation" drama in German by Hugo vom Hafmansthal. A friend of mine in college that first lost semester at William and Mary loved to talk about how Electra (Elektra) was banned. Clytemnestra has murdered her husband and fears getting caught by her children, including Elektra. Indeed Elektra plots revenge but falls dead herself at the end in a dance of death. The opera ends with abrupt and sarcastically triumphant C major chords, to make light of the tragedy. They key changes at the end are abrupt but amazingly effective; I have attempted some similar harmonies at the end of my third sonada. I saw this at the Met in the mid 1970s. The opera makes many explorations into dissonance, anticipating Berg, perhaps, while remaining richly romantic.
Collier, Solti, Vienna Philharmonic, 1967