The most important figure in the world of German opera to-day is unquestionably that of Richard Strauss.  This is not the place to dilate upon Strauss’s achievements as a symphonic writer, which are sufficiently well known to the world at large.  His first opera, ‘Guntram’ (1894), was hardly more than an exercise in the manner of Wagner, and made comparatively little impression.  ‘Feuersnoth’ (1901) was a far more characteristic production.  It deals with an old legend of the love of a sorcerer for a maiden.  The sorcerer is rejected, and in revenge he deprives the town in which the maiden lives of fire and light.  The townspeople press the maiden to relent, and her yielding is signalised by a sudden blaze of splendour.  Strauss’s score shows to the full the amazing command of polyphony and the bewildering richness and variety of orchestration which have made his name famous.  The plot of ‘Feuersnoth,’ however, was against it, and it does not seem to have won a permanent success.  ‘Salome’ (1906), on the other hand, has triumphed in Italy and Paris as well as in Germany, and succeeded in scandalising New York so seriously that it was withdrawn after a single performance.  ‘Salome’ is a setting, almost unabbreviated, of Oscar Wilde’s play of that name, which itself owed much to a tale by Flaubert.  The scene is laid upon a terrace of Herod’s palace, where soldiers are keeping watch while the king holds revel within.  Salome, the daughter of Herodias, issues from the banquet chamber, troubled by Herod’s gaze.  The voice of Jochanaan (John the Baptist), who is imprisoned in a cistern hard by, is heard.  Salome bids Narraboth, a young Assyrian, bring him forth.  Dragged from his living tomb, Jochanaan denounces the wickedness of Herodias, but Salome has no ears for his curses.  Fascinated by the strange beauty of the prophet, she pours forth her passion in wild accents.  Jochanaan repulses her and retreats once more to his cistern.  Herod and Herodias now come forth from the banquet, and Herod bids Salome dance.  She extorts a promise from him that he will give her whatever she asks, even to the half of his kingdom, and dances the dance of the seven veils.  The dance over, she demands the head of Jochanaan.  Herod pleads with her in vain, the executioner is sent into the cistern and the head of Jochanaan is brought in upon a silver charger.  Salome kisses the lifeless lips, but Herod in wrath and horror cries to his soldiers:  ‘Kill this woman,’ and as the curtain falls she is crushed beneath their shields.  Strauss is the stormy petrel of modern music, and ‘Salome’ has aroused more discussion than anything he has written.  Many critics quite the reverse of prudish have found its ethics somewhat difficult of digestion, while conservative musicians hold up their hands in horror at its harmonic audacity.  The more advanced spirits find a strange exotic beauty in the weird harmonies and infinitely suggestive orchestration, and contend with some justice that a work of art must be judged as such, not as an essay in didactic morality.  The ‘Salome’ question may well be left for time to settle, more especially as the subject and treatment of the work combine to put its production upon the London stage beyond the limits of immediate probability.