Boldly tackling ‘Salome’ in Palo Alto

The West Bay Opera has a long and storied history, one that has concentrated largely (though not exclusively) on standard works of the Italian and French repertoire.

The orchestra and conductor must contend with the composer’s lush, prickly instrumental style, and the stage director must thread a path through the work’s dangerous shards of eroticism.

Most daunting of all, perhaps, are the gleaming, high-intensity demands of the title role — to be undertaken on this occasion by the fearless soprano Heather Green.