As in the biblical rendition, this version of the story finds the motive for the prophet’s horrific demise in the ire of Herod’s erstwhile spouse Herodias, or Hérodiade in the title role of the opera. Herodias is intent on John’s destruction because he has castigated her Jezebel of this era in the Biblical epoch. Here similarity between the opera and gospel narratives ends. Herodias hates John the Baptist, not only because he condemns the impropriety of her liaison with Herod, who is technically her brother-in-law, but also because Herod is infatuated with Salome, Herodias's abandoned daughter. Maternal abnegation in repudiation not only of her child, but of her entire family, for an advantageous marriage to Herod exacerbates Herodias’s fits of conscience. Salome, the object of Herod’s desire, which culminates in attempted rape, is not the seductive dancer who induces the Tetrarch to deliver the Baptist’s head on a platter, but an innocent girl, who after being befriended by John in the desert, falls in love with him.

Affairs of state are as ripe for destruction as the Tetrarch's perilous psychological condition, and an eerie parallelism between the state Herod governs and his state of mind runs through the events of the opera. The clamor of the Jews for freedom and frequent threats of uprisings against Roman domination put Herod in a position to wield power granted him by the oppressors against his own people, yet he remains continually vulnerable. He repulses the pleas of his wife, first cajoling then in sardonic rage, for the Baptist's death, because he thinks he can manage ferment by appearing to align himself with the large following the desert prophet supposedly commands. By turns calling for holy war against the Romans and then playing the sycophant in their midst, Herod courts disaster of the sort that eventually befalls Jerusalem under the Roman Emperor Titus in 70 A. D.. As an aside it is interesting to note that Emperor Titus turns up, incongruously, as the compassionate monarch in Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito.

John the Baptist is a transcendental point of reference in the midst of human depravity and Salome's only consolation. He is perhaps the only man of nobility she has ever known. In this opera the Baptist is a heroic tenor, not the gloomy baritone of Strass's Salome. Her love for him, at first unrequited, mingles passion and devotion engendered by the memory of his kindness to her in the wilderness where she wandered after being abandoned by her mother. Her innocence and ardor are heard in the aria, Il est doux, il est bon, which she sings in Act I just before scenes that set Herrod's lust in juxtaposition with the vindictive rage of Herodias. Herod's passion is irreducible, and he cannot assuage his wife's ire because of his fear of the Jews. He roars that he will remain master of his domain, until the Baptist makes his entrance in furious malediction. Shaken, Herod and Herodias stagger off.

The action of the opera and individual scenes intersect gospel narratives at oblique angles. As in the gospels, Herod's dilemma regarding John the Baptist parallels that of Pontius Pilate in determination of the fate of Jesus. Again as with Jesus of the gospels, the followers of John the Baptist first hail him as deliverer then clamor for his crucifixion. When Salome rapturously declares her love for the Baptist, he urges her toward holy devotion inspired by the new faith, which he proclaims as the dawn of life and immortality. Salome wraps her hair around the prophet's ankles in the manner of the woman who washes Jesus's feet with her tears and dries them with her hair, but Salome's character is unlike the dubious virtue of the woman of the gospels. She loves John innocently despite the connotations of her role as the dancer who induces the Tetrarch in John's demise. John is on the verge of acquiescence to her love, and does embrace her in their final moments before his martyrdom, but love of this unpolluted strain is only an innocent contrast to the monstrous passions in this opera.

Herod is in pursuit of Salome, whom he has offered refuge in his palace, while Herodias, as yet unaware that the object of Herod's lust and her lethal jealousy is her daughter, plots Salome's destruction with that of the Baptist. Herod, after being aroused by slaves and women of the court, quaffs a potion offered by one of them and then sings his soliloquy of phantasmagorical sexual obsession, Vision Fugitive. The aria is one of the most stunningly evocative melodies in the repertoire, after which Herod abandons all caution and descends into the illusion. Leading Salome to the couch in an imagined consummation, he loses even that and collapses in helpless drunkenness. A lieutenant, Phanuel, walks over to the monarch in ruin and looks down at him in pity, but also with contempt, as Iago surveys the wreckage of Otello in Verdi's Shakespearean analysis of a man undone by passion.

Among the passions that mar Herodias’s character are: jealousy of her rival Salome, fervent hatred of her accuser the Baptist, and rage against her husband for his refusal to avenge her. Jealousy as uncontrollable as that of Otello is Herodias’s compliment to Herod's illicit desire. Like that of Otello, her jealousy causes the death of an innocent woman. Her fury is such that she plots to destroy her rival, her accuser, and even the Romans against whom Herod does not have the moral authority to marshal an effective rebellion, but she is as cowardly as Herod. Herod’s impotent and duplicitous address in Jerusalem succeeds in inspiring various factions among his people to forge an alliance against the Romans, but Herodias, having heard the approaching entourage of the Roman Proconsul Vitellius, derides the assembly for its display of defiance. Herod cowers in fear, making a mockery of the great chorus, “Oui, la mort ou notre indépendence!” Herodias goes to welcome the Proconsul.

During a lull in the action the Chaldean lieutenant Phanuel, an astrologer, is studying the heavens. He asks the stars to reveal the true identity of John the Baptist, but Herodias interrupts him demanding to know what star controls Salome’s fate. The heavens reveal more than she wishes to ascertain. Phanuel explains that the planets of Salome and of Herodias are now in an evil and bloody conjunction. There is another planetary sign indicating the queen’s motherhood, but Herodias refuses to acknowledge the truth that Salome is the daughter she has covertly and sorrowfully sought. Phanuel comprehends her guilt and denounces her. “You are a woman,” he declaims, “but a mother, never!”

Another parallel with the gospels appears in the jealousy of the priests at the Baptist’s notoriety among the people. It is the religious leaders who ultimately interdict Herod’s scheme to use John’s followers against the Romans. As the priests of the gospels betray Jesus to the Romans, the priests in the opera curry favor with Vitellius by demanding that they condemn this radical prophet from the desert, whom they accuse as a false messiah, for inciting the Jews to rebellion. Because John is a Galilean, Vitellius insists that it is Herod who should judge him. The interrogation elicits from John the phrase, “la liberté”, and pandemonium erupts. Herod offers John reprieve in exchange for help in securing his reign, but John refuses. A clamor breaks out again and the crowd cries out, “Crucify him!” Willing to die with him, Salome comes to his side. Herod comprehends the depth of Salome’s devotion and sentences both of them to death. With inspired fervor John challenges the mob to slay him as they have slain the prophets. In words that resonate with the eschatological utterances of Jesus, he thunders, “Not one stone will be left on another!”

As a force in the opera John is a vector with both magnitude and direction. He has moral authority and the offences in range of his wrath are overripe for God's retribution. Originating in transcendence, John's absolute conviction makes universal moral truth visible in human history. Since occurrences of this kind of certitude are as rare as the prophets who die in them, the works of the prophets are transmitted to posterity as scripture. When visionaries of this order are not in existence we have opera to extemporize. The truths of the Western literary canon are nowhere more powerfully represented than in the greatest works composed for the musical theater. John can face death without fear because eternity looms larger as his clear moral vision is overwhelmed by egregious sin. Martyrdom is the predictable end for those with the clearest view on the human condition,. His soul opens to the infinite as John sings, "Adieu donc, vains objets qui nous". The vault in which he is imprisoned begins to seem too small to contain him.

In this extremity an operatic tenor needs to remember that he is the rightful possessor of the heroine's love. This apocryphal saint is growing in recognition of his love for Salome. The urgency of his need for her makes him question his election as a prophet, and he prays for deliverance from carnal desire, "O Seigneur, to souffres que l'amour vienne ébrauler ma foi?" The heroine in this drama is not fending off the advances of the chief of police in the Farnese Palace like Tosca during the tenors reminiscences. Here she is imprisoned in the same dungeon as the tenor. At the appropriate time Salome finds her way to him in the recesses of the vault. He owns his love for her and they cling to one another. The spiritual vision that impels John's ethical mandate is sufficient to inspire hope against the obliteration of the love he has discovered. Salome has been in possession of the same enlightenment for some time, reflected by the foil of John's kindness against the world's darkness. Together they sing, "When our lives are quenched fire/ as it were a sacred pyre/ Still our love will radiant be/ And solve the unknown in immortality." Then the guards bring news of Salome's reprieve and forcibly remove her from John's presence.

The final tableau in the Procosul's palace includes all the despicable characters who thrive, indeed exult, in the midst of carnage in their realm. Herod the Tetrarch and Herodias, like the Beast of the Apocalypse and Whore of Babylon, sing with Vitellius the Proconsul, "Nous sommes Romains." We are Romans! Father Tiber look upon thy sons! Salome pleads for the mercy of being permitted to die with the Baptist. She is not the dancer of the gospels who induces Herod to inordinate commitments. Instead a ballet of Phoenician, Babylonian, and Gallic women enliven the festivities. When Herod is impassible to her plea, Salome turns to Herodias, imploring the queen as a daughter to her mother to intercede and spare the Baptist. Though the truth of the metaphor is again opaque to Herodias, she recalls her search for her daughter and imagines that the abandoned child might well have been as lovely as the girl before her now.

Herodias is near surrender to her daughter's entreaties, when in sudden transport Salome bursts out with the accusation that her mother has abandoned her for an illicit marriage. Urged on by Vitellius and Phanuel, the pagans, Herodias is moved, but in the moment of her hesitation, the executioner appears holding a sword dripping blood. The prophet is dead. Salome lunges with a dagger at Herodias, who cries, "Have mercy, I am thy mother!" Salome turns the dagger on herself declaring, "Queen, if it were thy odious womb that bore me, take back thy blood!" She dies and Herodias falls on the body wailing, "My daughter!"