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Blood, Thunder, and Elektra
| Article
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17479 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1990 |
2,076 Words |
| Author
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Lawrence O''Toole
Lawrence O'Toole writes for Entertainment Weekly and other
national publications. |
Richard Strauss' Elektra, which burst upon a shocked operatic world in 1909, hurls you immediately into its violent action. Within the House of Atreus, Klytemnestra's maids are busily scrubbing away at the blood from the murder of her husband, Agamemnon, by her lover, Aegisth. Her daughter Elektra, cast out and half-mad with grief for her father, arrives and plots with her ineffectual sister, Chrysothemis, and then her recently returned brother, Oreste, to murder her mother and her mother's lover. Not quite two hours later, the unhappy House of Atreus is dripping blood again, and Elektra, now truly insane, dances herself into a revanchist frenzy and then to death.
Strauss' orchestra is mammoth, and his music - by turns rawly percussive and meltingly lyrical - a model of dramatic cohesion. There isn't a wasted note in this score, nor a wasted word in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's text. The role of Elektra is itself a vocal Everest that few sopranos can climb. Often Strauss' leviathan orchestral forces overwhelm the singers to the point where their voices become swallowed by the sea of sound surrounding them. Most productions of Elektra sorely lack one element or another - propulsive conducting, an interesting concept, an acceptable Elektra - and it is rate to find all the elements coalescing, as they did so magnificently in the Royal Opera's new production at Covent Garden.
In fact, one could go so far as to say that the Gotz Friedrich production, conducted by Sir Georg Solti, is one of the greatest operatic achievements of our time.
Friedrich once said in an interview that he would never produce Elektra on the stage until he found a way for
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