With the ink barely dry on his salacious new opera, Strauss started adapting its vocal lines to the eccentric French of his source, Oscar Wilde’s play, in summer 1905. The French text shimmers seductively and alliteratively in music that feels like its natural home; the inevitable softening of declamation heightens not just the weirdness and decadence of the story but also its comic aspects. Herod, on one level a self-portrait of Wilde, becomes a wry, blackly humorous, fallibly human character; Herodias and Salome seem even more perversely dangerous in their respective quests for revenge and sexual enlightenment. But French managements failed to endorse Strauss’s frequent preference for Wilde’s mal français over Romain Rolland’s Debussy-inspired corrections and, by 1907, the composer’s authentic Salomé was dead in the water, overtaken by a French translation of Lachmann’s German libretto that fitted Strauss’s original music. Only in 1989/90 came a researched revival of Salomé in concert, on stage, and then recorded by Virgin.

Thanks to Toscanini (who commissioned a translation for his country’s premiere of the work based on Strauss’s French version), Italians may well be more familiar with the notes of Salomé than Salome – which may justify Martina Franca festival director Sergio Segalini’s casting of an almost wholly Italian cast. The performance starts nervously with shaky top notes and language (despite evident coaching) and insecure Strauss style. The orchestra sound like they’re reading well rather than interpreting. Later Soloviy, the Ukrainian Salome, shows presence and gives a real performance of Salome’s Todesliebe with Jochanaan’s head. Gramegna enjoys himself as Herod. Caldi’s players, following over-careful accounts of the Baptist’s journeys to and from his cistern, gain authority and weight, like the recording, as the evening progresses. Overall though, the result, as preserved for repetition, is less than compelling.

The Virgin set (nla) places a rather understated Salome (Karen Huffstodt) amid a strong, lively all-Francophone cast. The performing standard is significantly higher than at Martina Franca but Kent Nagano’s meticulous but passionless conducting robs the show of some bite. It’s the safer bet if you want to study Strauss’s reworking, but neither French set holds a candle to the German performances under Reiner (Guild), Krauss (Gebhardt and Decca, A/04) or Sinopoli (DG, 9/91).