Denoke wins her place in the sun as a lithe if hardly sex-kittenish Salome. She has an expressive, secure and slightly dark-timbred voice...Held is a physically and vocally powerful prophet...It's all clear and slick throughout but never quite makes the flesh creep.

There's no denying the conviction of the performance, and the filming is suitably bold in its use of close-up...the unseen conductor Stefan Soltesz makes a powerful impression and the torrid score breathes but never drags. Denoke has the measure of the taxing title-role: assuming that we have is a single, unedited performance, she does particularly well to save an extra degree of vocal heft for the final scene.

This Nikolaus Lehnhoff-directed production draws vivid and valid characterizations and motivations...Kim Begley's big-voiced Herod is properly nasty; Doris Soffel's ageing movie-star-like Herodias is both shrill and menacing; and Alan Held's Jokanaan is filled with scorn, piety and grandeur.