Richard Strauss's opera "Salome" is not easy to produce. Its vocal, orchestral and staging demands, not to mention its still-shocking subject matter, make it just an occasional visitor even in the world's top houses. The Opera Company of North Carolina's exceedingly successful production in UNC's Memorial Hall confirms its credentials as a viable regional company, an achievement belying its mere decade of existence.

Even a century after its premiere, the story of the Biblical seductress, filtered through the exotic decadence of Oscar Wilde, produces fascination and revulsion in equal parts. Salome's famous "Dance of the Seven Veils" and her demented intimacy with the prophet Jokanaan's severed head are just two of the spellbinding moments.

Audiences perfectly comfortable with Carmen's morals or Don Giovanni's lechery can balk at Salome's excesses. Thus all the more credit goes to OCNC for treating the work seriously and fearlessly but without exploitation or gimmicks. Virtually every element of this production was right.

Deserving first mention is artistic director Robert Galbraith's confident, creative direction, filled with thoughtful motivations, focused action and beautifully balanced stage pictures. Galbraith was aided by the stunning setting (from the Opera Company of Philadelphia), with its massive palace doors and flaming torches adorning imposing stone walls. Ken Yunker's subtle, ever-changing lighting and Patricia Herbert's rich, appropriate costumes completed the company's most impressive physical production.

Strauss created an impossible role, Salome ideally demanding a singer with youth and physical allure allied to the lungpower of a Wagnerian Walkyrie. Usually, the former is sacrificed for the latter. Luckily, Kelly Cae Hogan had all the physical requirements and a voice strong enough for the many climatic moments, helped by the reduced orchestral forces here and the relatively small house. She was fully committed to the character, from the dance's coy unveilings to the erotic kissing of Jokanaan's frighteningly realistic bloody head.

Baritone Bradley Garvin's burnished, auditorium-filling tones as Jokanaan made one wish the libretto hadn't sent him back into his cistern cell so soon. George Gray did the great favor of really singing Herod, not falling back on the snarling whine that so many do, and he made the character's troubled mind real rather than caricatured. Gwendolyn Jones gratefully made Herodias a believable woman rather than the silent movie crone that's often served up. The lesser roles were taken with pleasing evenness, notably David Holley's Narraboth, Uwe Dambruch's First Soldier and Cheryse McLeod's Page. All the cast had exemplary German diction.

Conductor Laurence Gilgore led the difficult score with understanding, successfully keeping the many thickly written passages from overwhelming the singers. There were patches of uncertainly and thinness but nothing that distracted from the vision of the whole. If one has a different experience with the score and voices in an international house, this was nonetheless a satisfying alternative.

The success of this production whets the appetite for more operatic repertory formerly unavailable to the Triangle because of its higher-level requirements. The Opera Company of North Carolina appears to be ready to take those on.