The Met will veil screen ‘Salome’

Karita Mattila. Naked. Those three words have been on the mind of practically every New York opera fan for the last month as the Finnish soprano strips bare in the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of “Salome” by Richard Strauss.

On Saturday, the company will broadcast the opera live to movie theaters around the country. While those at the Met will see Mattila go full frontal during the Dance of the Seven Veils, people at the movies will see something, well, much more restrained.

“You’ll see the camera pan away from her as she does the dance,” a Met spokesman said. “Either it will pan discreetly away to the audience, or it will do a close-up of her face.”

The decision not to show the nudity came from Met general manager Peter Gelb, who, he said, “decided early on that the ‘Salome’ broadcast would not feature nudity.” The Met markets its broadcasts as family-friendly events, the spokesman noted.

-- David Ng