Elektra from Salzburg

 

Chrysothemis and Elektra

Stage director - Krzysztof Warlikowski
Conductor - Franz Welser-Möst

Elektra, Agamemnon's daughter - Aušrinė Stundytė (soprano)
Chrysothemis, her sister - Asmik Grigorian   (soprano)
Klytämnestra, their mother - Tanja Ariane Baumgartner (mezzo)
Aegisth, Klytämnestra's lover - Michael Laurenz  (tenor)
Orest, son of Agamemnon - Derek Welton (baritone)

Since it still is on medici.tv, I decided to give Elektra from Salzburg last summer a try.  It was performed in the Felsenreitscchule and was one of only two operas presented at that time. The other was Mozart's Cosi fan tutte.

It starts with a speech by Klytämnestra before starting the opera.  She says it was she who killed Agamemnon.  Elektra is one of the daughters of Agamemnon and Klytämnestra.  The women are left at home for ten years while Agamemnon leads the Greeks to Troy to fight for the return of his brother Menelaus's wife Helen who was kidnapped by Paris.  While he is away, his wife takes a lover, Aegisth, and kills her husband when he returns from the war.

The opera begins with Elektra brooding over the murder of her father.  This is a regie production with everyone dressed in modern clothes.  Elektra smokes.  The Felsenreitscchule provides a space for a long shallow swimming pool.  Perhaps it's a feature of the building.  When Elektra cries out to see her father, he appears.  At least I assume that's who it is.  She dances. 

The production is interesting, but these people seem to have been cast for their looks.  They look like the characters they portray, but there is a lot of shouting.  To look like their characters the girls are vocally too immature for their roles. Theatrically it is stunning.  Previously I have seen Christine Goerke and Nina Stemme sing Elektra, but this is more serious, more intense, more in the time of life when all becomes difficult. 

The lushness of the orchestra is beautiful.  The translation is very good.  Many people love this opera.  There seems to be an audience.  Recommended for the intensity.

Elektra Night at the Museum

Christine Goerke

 👍🏻
Conductor:  Henrik Nánási
Production:  Keith Warner

Elektra: Christine Goerke
Klytemnestra, Elektra's mother: Michaela Martens
Chrysothemis, Elektra's sister: Adrianne Pieczonka
Orest, Elektra's brother: Alfred Walker *
Aegisth, mother's lover: Robert Brubaker
Tutor of Orest: Anthony Reed

Last night I attended a San Francisco Opera performance of Richard Strauss's Elektra.  I have been going here for all of my adult life and can think of only one comparable performance--Die Frau ohne Schatten, also by Strauss, in 1980 with James King as The Emperor, Leonie Rysanek as The Empress and Birgit Nilsson as Barak's wife.  My soul is larger.  Everything that needs to be said has already been said about this, but I will have a go anyway.

In the recent past was another night at the museum production, of Il Trovatore with Anna Netrebko from Salzburg, but the exhibition seemed without a theme and incoherent.  Here we have what seems to be an exhibition of artifacts from Mycenae, the Greek culture which launched the Trojan War.  The house of Atreus with Agamemnon, Klytemnestra, Iphigenia, Orestes and Elektra are the central figures from this culture and appear through history in many art forms.  It is entirely plausible that an  exhibit devoted to physical objects from this time would take place.  Many of these objects appear in this production.  So we have a far more plausible intermingling of the ancient and the modern.  When they speak of Agamemnon, a man wearing the death mask said to belong to him appears.  We believe this.

Christine's character is always clearly a modern person who is projecting her life and family onto these historical figures.  We see this most clearly when this kitchen appears:

Klytemnestra and Elektra

We exclaimed to one another, "My mother had a kitchen like that."  The time travel was handled very smoothly.  This is clearly a very successful concept regie production.  All the other characters have dual identities and appear in modern and ancient clothing.  Other productions for this opera I have seen recently have all the main action take place off stage.  Here the deaths occur before our eyes.  It is intense.

Musically I found this to be a triumph.  The three women--Christine Goerke, Michaela Martens and Adrianne Pieczonka--were performed by three big voices in glorious fashion.  The biggest surprise was in the music.  It wasn't that long ago I was bemoaning the death of great Strauss conducting.  Henrik Nánási has shown us the way back.  It was the best Strauss I've heard in years, and it was by our San Francisco Opera orchestra.  Bravi.  Because the screens were turned on, I noticed that the orchestra stood immediately when the maestro came out for his final bow, turned toward him and applauded.

It was a colossal, towering performance on every level.

Another Elektra with Janis Martin

ELEKTRA
Oper Köln 24-November-1985
Conductor - Gerd Albrecht

Janis Martin
Kathryn Montgomery-Meissner
Helga Dernesch
Hermann Winkler
Harald Stamm

Janis is convincingly a soprano here--perhaps the first time I have thought so.  

Elektra in HD

Conductor:  Esa-Pekka Salonen
Production:  Patrice Chéreau

Klytämnestra, Elektra's mother: Waltraud Meier (mezzo-soprano)
Elektra: Nina Stemme (soprano)
Chrysothemis, Elektra's sister: Adrianne Pieczonka (soprano)
Aegisth, Klytämnestra's new husband: Burkhard Ulrich (tenor)
Orest, Elektra's brother: Eric Owens (baritone)

Two different performances of Richard Strauss' Elektra in the same month is a bit overwhelming.  The first was at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on April 7.  The second was the live simulcast from the Metropolitan Opera.  I will not be able to help comparing them.  The libretto is by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

We were told in the interviews at the beginning that this was probably the largest orchestra ever crowded into the Met orchestra pit.  The simulcasts seem to find a way around any problems with the orchestra covering the singers.  Both Esa-Pekka Salonen and Donald Runnicles are excellent conductors, though I have heard Runnicles many more times.

There is not much to contrast about the productions.  Both were drab, gray, modernized productions designed to emphasize the grimness of the story.  Elektra, Chrysothemis and Orest are all children of Agamemnon, the chief commander on the Greek side of the Trojan war.  While he is gone for 10 years fighting the war over Helen, his wife Klytämnestra takes up with another man.  When Agamemnon returns, Klytämnestra and Aegisth kill him with an ax.  Orest is banished, and Elektra spends her years wishing for revenge.

The two productions reference the ax differently.  In Berlin Klytämnestra enters using it as a cane, and she leaves it behind when she flees from Elektra who is threatening her.  In New York Elektra brings the ax out of Agamemnon's tomb where she has been keeping it.  I think the New York production follows the libretto more closely.  It is clear there that Klytämnestra is making animal sacrifices to appease the gods.  I thought for some reason that in Berlin she carried the ax around to kill people with it and don't remember a reference to animal sacrifices.  She comes to visit Elektra to ask her what she must do to stop dreaming that Orest will come to kill her.  What sacrifice must I offer?  Who do I need to kill?  Elektra's answer:  yourself.

In Berlin Klytämnestra and Aegisth were both killed at the back of the stage by Orest.  At the Met Orest's tutor kills Aegisth downstage while Orest is offstage.  For me the Berlin staging of the killings worked better.  It's perhaps a tossup.

The Elektras from both productions are the same age, 53.  The greatest contrast in the two productions was in the singing.  At the Met the whole cast were heavier voices than the Berlin cast, with the possible exception of Waltraud Meier who sang in  sweet but terrified style.  She is a wonderful singer who brings her great presence to the role.  [Was she wearing Venetian beads?]

In Berlin Chrysothemis was sung by a lyric soprano, while Adrianne Pieczonka is a dramatic and sang much heavier.  She seemed to be auditioning for Elektra.  Perhaps.  I always love and respect Nina Stemme who was simply glorious.  The intensity and drama carried throughout both productions.  In Berlin Elektra dances and then dies.

Occasionally you hear in the orchestra tiny hints of the Strauss opera which comes next:  Der Rosenkavalier.  I feel that I have had my fill of Elektra.

Elektra at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

👍🏻
Conductor: Donald Runnicles
Production: Kirsten Harms

Klytämnestra, Elektra's mother: Doris Soffel (mezzo-soprano)
Elektra: Evelyn Herlitzius (soprano)
Chrysothemis, Elektra's sister: Manuela Uhl (soprano)
Aegisth, Klytämnestra's new husband: Clemens Bieber (tenor)
Orest, Elektra's brother: Tobias Kehrer (baritone)

It was a wonderful privilege to experience this production of Strauss's Elektra at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin.  I am very familiar with Donald Runnicles, of course, from his years at the San Francisco Opera.  He still comes to us on occasion to bring us wonderful things like the recent Les Troyens. Elektra is just his stuff.  It was beautiful and intensely dramatic throughout.  Runnicles is a great Wagnerian, and this is the most Wagnerian of Strauss's scores.

Elektra comes every day to a sacred place to mourn the death of her father Agamemnon.  In our production this is something like a dirt filled trash heap.  New trash falls from above during the opera.  The other women of the palace ridicule her.

Klytämnestra cannot sleep and comes to ask Elektra for advice.  She has been executing people and enters carrying an ax.  She imagines that if she kills the right person, her nightmares will stop.  Elektra explains that it is she who must die.  In the above picture Elektra holds the ax and Klytämnestra lies on the ground.

The cast was all excellent, but it was Evelyn Herlitzius with the guidance of Runnicles who brought the opera to a state of overwhelming intensity.  It would be difficult to imagine something more difficult.  Bravi.  It was very moving.

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I have to add:  you will notice from the pictures that this is my second opera with an ax since arriving in Berlin.  In Der Vampyr the heroine wields her ax in an attempt to hit a vampire, but misses and hits her father instead.  In Elektra Klytämnestra wanders around the house using an ax rather like a cane.  In case there is a problem she has a weapon ready.  She leaves it behind when she leaves in a hurry.