Decadence, desire, and deadly obsession: Salome opens at Lyric on Sunday, January 25

View Salome images here

CHICAGO (1/23/2026) — Lyric Opera of Chicago's 2025/26 Season continues with Richard Strauss’s electrifying Salome, on stage January 25 – February 14, 2026.

One of opera's most provocative works returns to Lyric for the first time in 20 years in Sir David McVicar’s decadent production, which is influenced by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s notorious 1975 film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. A trio of acclaimed singers make their Lyric debuts: soprano Jennifer Holloway in the title role of the young princess consumed by forbidden desire, tenor Alex Boyer as her volatile father Herod, and rising star Nicholas Brownlee — winner of the 2025 Richard Tucker Award and International Opera Awards Male Singer of the Year — as Jochanaan, the imprisoned prophet who dares to refuse Salome's advances. Conductor Tomáš Netopil makes his Lyric debut leading an expanded Lyric Opera Orchestra through Strauss’s revolutionary score.

We hope audiences can join us for this unsparing opera — where obsession leads to violence, seduction turns lethal, and one dance changes everything. From the infamous “Dance of the Seven Veils” to opera’s most famous silver platter, Salome shows that when a teenage princess doesn’t get her way, heads will roll.

View Salome images here

A high-resolution video trailer will be available soon on Lyric's YouTube channel and in Lyric's online press room.

Read the digital program book of Salome before the performance.

Performance dates for Salome are January 25 at 2:00 p.m.; January 29, February 3, and 6 at 7:00 p.m.; February 11 at 2:00 p.m., and February 14 at 7:30 p.m. All performances take place at the Lyric Opera House, 20 North Wacker Drive, Chicago.

Salome is performed in German, with easy-to-follow projected English titles above the stage.

A total running time of 1 hour and 40 minutes, with no intermission.

Audio description, a guided touch tour of the set, and SoundShirts are available at the Sunday, January 25 matinee performance. Braille and large-print programs, high-powered opera glasses, assistive listening devices, and booster seats are available from the theater’s Steiner Parquet coat checks at all performances. For more information on these and other accessibility assets, visit lyricopera.org/accessibility.

For information and tickets, call 312.827.5600 or go to lyricopera.org/salome.

Lyric Opera's Season is presented by

About Lyric

Lyric Opera of Chicago is committed to redefining what it means to experience great opera. The company is driven to deliver consistently excellent artistry through innovative, relevant, celebratory programming that engages and energizes new and traditional audiences.

Under the leadership of General Director, President & CEO John Mangum and Music Director Enrique Mazzola, Lyric is dedicated to reflecting, and drawing strength from, the diversity of Chicago. Lyric offers, through innovation, collaboration, and evolving learning opportunities, ever-more exciting, accessible, and thought-provoking audience and community experiences. We also stand committed to training the artists of the future, through The Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center; and to becoming increasingly diverse across our audiences, staff, programming, and artists—magnifying the welcoming pull of our art form, our company, and our city.

Through the timeless power of voice, the splendor of a great orchestra and chorus, theater, dance, design, and truly magnificent stagecraft, Lyric is devoted to immersing audiences in worlds both familiar and unexpected, creating shared experiences that resonate long after the curtain comes down.

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For more information on Lyric's upcoming 2024/25 Season, visit lyricopera.org/newseason.