From the Tetrach’s palace to the House of Atreus – still in his early career, Strauss took on another psychodrama and gruesome tragedy.
Elektra, the successor to Salome, offers a far more complex heroine, and a story that takes him further into the music of madness and further away from conventional tonality and structure. It’s not just Elektra whose mind makes mad music – listen for the madness of her murderous and ultimately murdered mother, Klytemnestra.
For the first of many successful collaborations, he was working with poet and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who had already produced a play on Elektra and adapted it for the libretto. Strauss responded with music of ‘relentless dramatic impetus and biting tonality’ (Minnesota Opera). And as always, it was music for women's voices that dominated.
Strauss and those heroines
Listen here to Deborah Voigt hosting discussion of Strauss and his strong women heroines.
And listen here to a superb documentary from Deutsche Welle – Germany’s international broadcaster, on the composer, his personal life and the women in his life and operas.
That story
Hofmannsthal took the oft-told legend from Sophocles - but changed it significantly. Here’s Wikipedia’s brisk summary of the ghastly backstory to the opera.
Set in the city of Argos a few years after the Trojan War, the play tells of a bitter struggle for justice by Electra and her brother Orestes for the murder of their father Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and their stepfather Aegisthus.
When King Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War, his wife Clytemnestra (who has taken Agamemnon's cousin Aegisthus as a lover) kills him. Clytemnestra believes the murder was justified, since Agamemnon had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia before the war, as commanded by the gods. Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, rescued her younger brother Orestes from her mother by sending him to Strophius of Phocis. The play begins years later when Orestes has returned as a grown man with a plot for revenge, as well as to claim the throne.
The opera begins there too, but we see the story through Electra’s increasing madness.
From ancient legend to C20 play, to libretto
There’s a thoughtful piece here by Tim Ashley reflecting on Hofmannsthal’s translation of a legend about the power of the gods into a study of human madness and murder.
Much has been made of his ditching of many overt trappings of Greek drama, such as turning Sophocles' single-minded chorus into a gaggle of squabbling maids. Infinitely more important, however, was his decision to jettison the myth's metaphysics in their entirety. There is no divinely imposed pattern of retribution, no Furies to goad and torment his Orest, and the characters are consequently at the mercy of their own uncontrollable psyches and irrationalistic obsessions. Myth becomes the embodiment of psychological extremism as Hofmannsthal collides with his contemporary Freud. Read more here.
Interested? Here’s the full text of Sophocles’ play, in a fine translation.
The Music
It's more like Wagner's music than Salome. A huge orchestra, massive sound carrying the drama. Strong leitmotifs mark the characters, most memorably the famous chord/cry “Ag-a- MEMMMM…non”which opens the operaand is called by Elektra as she seeks the spectre of her father. But it's not Wagner - this opera's "dissonance, chromaticism and extremely fluid tonality … represents Strauss's furthest advances in modernism, from which he later retreated. Harmonic parallelism is also prominent modernist technique.” (More in Wikipedia)
There’s a pastiche of the great musical passages here, in traditional performance, sung by the great Birgit Nilsson. Best moments of: ELEKTRA (sung by Birgit Nilsson)
Our Production
We’re watching a very different, modern-dress and controversial version from Zurich, 2005 produced by Martin Kušej. Elektra is sung by Eva Johansson; Clytaemnestra, Marjana Lipovsek. Conductor is Christoph von Dohnanyi. Reviewed here. And here.
Full opera version?
Here are two full opera opportunities. A very radical modern production is available on Opera Vision. Review here.
A magnificent film version of this opera by the director Götz Friedrich and the conductor Karl Böhm was recorded in 1981. Segments are played on this piece.
Leonie Rysanek led a formidable cast. There’s a behind the scenes video of them recording for the final scene of Elektra’s dance here.
Alternatively - and traditionally staged... It's murky image, but great sound - a full opera recording is on YouTube of a performance by London Symphony Orchestra (all of them!!) Valery Gergiev conducts with a superlative cast.
A great review here, including this question:
How are we to respond to this ethical nightmare, insensible as we are in the face of Strauss's coruscating music, which bursts with tender melody as well as ear-splitting, expressionist dissonance? His previous stage work, Salome, scarcely any prettier, posed similarly awkward questions, though at least there it's just a greedy girl who wants a head on a plate, not a mad bitch hoping to atone for an entire dynasty with a touch of matricide.
Lyn, 7 March 2022