Many years before Richard Strauss composed his opera on the subject of Salome and John the Baptist, Jules Massenet had explored the same relationship in Hérodiade. However, in Massenet’s opera it is the vengeful Hérodiade, Salomé’s mother, who demands John the Baptist’s head, not her naïve innocent daughter. The opera’s lyrical inwardness focuses on the characters’ most intimate feelings in a way that had not been heard before and was considered radical at the time.