BY KAREN BOSSICK

The biblical story of “Salome” will be screened as part of the Metropolitan Opera’s Live Simulcast today.

The screening starts at 10:55 a.m. today—Saturday, March 17—at Merlin’s Magic Lantern in Ketchum in a screening presented by Sun Valley Opera and Broadway.

The screening, sung in German, runs for 2 hours and 15 minutes. Tickets are $20, available at the box office by credit card. Students will be admitted free.

It is the first new production of Richard Strauss’s one-act tragedy that The Met has done ins20 years.

“Salome” is inspired by the biblical account of a young princess of Judea dancing for her stepfather Herod Antipas. When he likes what he sees, she chooses as her reward the head of the prophet John the Baptist.

Strauss’s score is said to combine the grandeur of Wagner’s epics with the emotional punch of the short Italian verismo operas. Claus Guth, one of Europe’s leading opera directors, gives the biblical story—already filtered through the beautiful and strange imagination of Oscar Wilde’s play—a psychologically perceptive, Victorian-era setting rich in symbolism and subtle shades of darkness and light.

Headlining the new staging is soprano Elza van den Heever as the abused and unhinged heroine, who demands the head of Jochanaan, sung by celebrated baritone Peter Mattei. Tenor Gerhard Siegel is Salome’s lecherous stepfather, King Herod, with mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as his wife, Herodias and tenor Piotr Buszewski as Narraboth.

The Music Director is Yannick Nézet-Séguin.