Which operas have nudity? Very few operas call for it in the score, but a handful of famous productions have put it on stage: Peter Hall’s Salome with Maria Ewing at Covent Garden, the Met’s 2004 Salome with Karita Mattila, Calixto Bieito’s Berlin Entführung, Olivier Py’s Geneva Hoffmann and Damiano Michieletto’s Guillaume Tell at the Royal Opera House. Below are six productions that bared all (or nearly all), what each one was trying to say, and why some landed as art while others were booed.
By the Musicals On Line team · October 2026
A quick ground rule before the curtain goes up: nudity in opera is almost always a director’s choice, not the composer’s. Strauss did not write “the soprano undresses” into Salome. That is why the same opera can be chaste in one house and notorious in the next, and why the argument is really about staging. If you want the wider debate, our essay on how modern is tolerable in opera is a good companion to this list.
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1. Salome, Royal Opera House, 1988: Maria Ewing
Richard Strauss’s one-act Salome, based on Oscar Wilde’s play, has been scandalous since its 1905 Dresden premiere, and its Dance of the Seven Veils is the most famous striptease cue in the repertoire. Most sopranos stop well short of the seventh veil. Maria Ewing did not. In Peter Hall’s production at Covent Garden in 1988, she ended the dance fully naked, and the moment became a sensation when the staging was broadcast on television, as the BBC and The Guardian recalled in their 2022 obituaries.
The best part of the story is whose idea it was. Hall, her husband at the time, had first suggested a G-string. Ewing refused. She later told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs that a G-string would be “dishonest” and “vulgar,” and that nudity in this context was no more vulgar than the nudity in classical paintings. Ewing died in January 2022, aged 71.
Why it worked: the dance is Salome’s bargaining chip. She strips to get what she wants from Herod, and stopping at a tasteful bikini would have undercut the point. We go deeper into the drama in our Salome and nudity in opera guide.
To see it for yourself, Peter Hall’s staging was filmed at Covent Garden in 1992 with Ewing in the title role: Salome, Royal Opera House, with Maria Ewing (Opus Arte DVD) (affiliate link). The disc carries a warning for nudity and violence.
2. Salome, Metropolitan Opera, 2004: Karita Mattila
Sixteen years later the question crossed the Atlantic. In March 2004, the Finnish soprano Karita Mattila sang Salome at the Met and ended the Dance of the Seven Veils with a brief moment of full nudity. The New York Times and The New York Observer both reviewed it, and the run is logged in the Met Opera archives.
The nudity lasted seconds; the role lasts the whole night. That is the useful lesson of this production: when the performance is strong enough, the headline fades and the portrayal stays.
3. Salome, Royal Opera House, 2008: David McVicar
Not every bold Salome puts the soprano in the spotlight. David McVicar’s 2008 Covent Garden staging, with Nadja Michael in the title role, moved the action to a grim below-stairs world and turned the Dance of the Seven Veils into a dreamlike flashback rather than a conventional striptease. The nudity came elsewhere: a naked executioner emerges from the cistern, covered in blood, carrying Jokanaan’s head, as described by The Guardian and Opera Today.
It is a neat reversal. Instead of asking the audience to look at Salome’s body, McVicar makes them look at the violence her demand sets loose.
McVicar’s production was recorded live at Covent Garden in March 2008, with Nadja Michael, Michael Volle and conductor Philippe Jordan: Salome, Royal Opera House 2008 (Opus Arte Blu-ray) (affiliate link).
4. Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Komische Oper Berlin, 2004: Calixto Bieito
If one director’s name comes up whenever people search for nudity in opera, it is Calixto Bieito. His 2004 staging of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail at Berlin’s Komische Oper set the story in a brothel, with nudity, simulated sex and graphic violence. It drew boos and walkouts and turned into a public row, covered at the time by The New York Times, The Guardian and El País.
Love him or loathe him, Bieito is consistent: he strips away the comfortable costume-drama surface to show the cruelty he thinks the opera is really about. Our guide to Calixto Bieito’s naked operas covers his Lulu and Armida too.
5. Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Grand Théâtre de Genève, 2008: Olivier Py
Olivier Py’s Geneva Hoffmann is the most playful production on this list. It opens with two fauns showing bare buttocks, places Olympia’s dazzling coloratura aria on a vast staircase with the doll undressed, and fills the Giulietta act with orgy scenes that the French review site Forum Opéra called well drilled and “sans vulgarité” (without vulgarity). It was filmed and released on DVD by Bel Air Classiques.
The nudity serves the story: Olympia is a commodity passed between men, and Giulietta’s world uses bodies as a trap. We explain the whole staging in what worked in Py’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann.
The Geneva staging was filmed in October 2008, with Patricia Petibon as Olympia and Marc Laho as Hoffmann: Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Grand Théâtre de Genève (Bel Air Classiques DVD) (affiliate link).
6. Guillaume Tell, Royal Opera House, 2015: Damiano Michieletto
And here is the one that went wrong, at least for its first-night audience. On June 29, 2015, Damiano Michieletto’s new production of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell opened at Covent Garden with a scene in which a woman, an actress outside the singing cast, is stripped naked and sexually assaulted by occupying soldiers during the Act 3 banquet. Booing broke out during the music itself, which a WhatsOnStage critic quoted by The Guardian called a first at the house. The Independent and The Telegraph covered the uproar too.
Kasper Holten, then the ROH’s director of opera, said the scene was meant to put a spotlight on sexual violence in wartime and apologized to anyone who found it distressing. Michieletto said he had no intention of changing it. The difference from Ewing’s Salome is telling: there, the performer chose to undress as her character’s act of power; here, nudity was something done to a character, and even the production’s tenor, John Osborn, said the scene maybe went on longer than it should have.
Michieletto’s production, with Gerald Finley in the title role and Antonio Pappano conducting, was released by Opus Arte in 2017: Guillaume Tell, Royal Opera House (Opus Arte DVD) (affiliate link).
Why do opera directors use nudity?
Look across the six and a pattern appears. The productions people remember fondly use nudity to say something about power: who is looking, who is being looked at, and who pays for it. The ones that get booed tend to feel, to the audience at least, as if the image has become the point. Three questions are worth asking whenever you see it on stage:
- Does it come from the character? Ewing’s Salome undresses to win a bargain. That is drama.
- Is it brief or lingering? Mattila’s moment lasted seconds; even a singer in Guillaume Tell said that scene went on too long.
- Who is exposed, and by whom? Nudity a character chooses reads very differently from nudity forced on someone.
Opera is not alone here. Broadway and the West End have had the same debate for decades, which we cover in nudity in musicals and nudity in straight plays.
How opera houses handle nudity today
The biggest change since the 1980s is backstage. In 2022 the Royal Opera House hired an intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien, for Katie Mitchell’s production of Handel’s Theodora, which The Guardian and Classic FM described as a first for the house. In 2023 Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu brought in O’Brien as well, reported by Reuters and The Guardian. Where houses use them, intimate scenes are choreographed and agreed in advance, much like stage fights.
Katie Mitchell’s Theodora, with Julia Bullock, Joyce DiDonato and Jakub Józef Orliński, was released on disc in 2023: Theodora, Royal Opera House (Opus Arte DVD) (affiliate link).
Frequently asked questions
Which operas have nudity?
No standard opera requires nudity in the score, but famous productions have included it: Peter Hall’s Salome with Maria Ewing (Royal Opera House, 1988), the Met’s 2004 Salome with Karita Mattila, Calixto Bieito’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Komische Oper Berlin, 2004), Olivier Py’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (Geneva, 2008) and Damiano Michieletto’s Guillaume Tell (Royal Opera House, 2015).
Is Salome performed nude?
Usually not. Most sopranos end the Dance of the Seven Veils covered. Maria Ewing at Covent Garden in 1988 and Karita Mattila at the Met in 2004 are the best-known exceptions.
Has the Metropolitan Opera staged nudity?
Yes. Karita Mattila’s Salome at the Met in March 2004 ended the Dance of the Seven Veils with a brief moment of full nudity, and it was widely reviewed at the time.
Why was the Royal Opera House’s Guillaume Tell booed?
On its June 2015 opening night, a scene in which a non-singing actress is stripped and assaulted by soldiers drew loud booing. The Royal Opera House said the scene was meant to show sexual violence in wartime and apologized for any distress, and the director kept it.
Do opera houses use intimacy coordinators?
Increasingly, yes. The Royal Opera House hired intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien for Handel’s Theodora in 2022, and Barcelona’s Liceu brought her in for a 2023 production.
Further sources: Opera singer Maria Ewing dies at 71, BBC News; Maria Ewing obituary, The Guardian; Maria Ewing dead at 71, The New York Times; Salome 1988 production record, Royal Opera House Collections; Salome review, Variety (2004); Salome at the Royal Opera, musicOMH (2008); Theodora, Intimacy On Set.
