Only one servant shows sympathy for her, but she is taken away by the overseer to be flogged. The servants continue commenting how she came to be in that state and talk about how they taunt her only to receive insults from her. While they do their work, they ask where can Elektra be, and she emerges from the shadows with a wild look on her face. Plot "Wo bleibt Elektra?" ("Where is Elektra?") įive servants try to wash the courtyard of the palace in Mycenae. Elektra has managed to send her brother away while remaining behind to keep her father's memory alive, but all the while, suffering the scorn of her mother and the entire court.
After his return, with the help of her paramour Aegisth, she murders her husband and now is afraid that her crime will be avenged by her other children, Elektra, Chrysothemis, and their banished brother Orest. Iphigenia's mother Klytaemnestra has thus come to hate her husband. Klytaemnestra ( Clytemnestra), their mother, Agamemnon's widow and killerĪegisth ( Aegisthus), Klytaemnestra's paramourīefore the opera begins, Agamemnon has sacrificed Iphigenia on the ruse that she is to be married, and subsequently goes off to war against Troy. 1909 Roles, voice types, premiere cast Roles The opera made its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on 3 December 1932, with Gertrude Kappel singing the title role and Artur Bodanzky conducting.Īnnie Krull as Elektra, c. The first United States performance of the opera in the original German was given by the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company at the Academy of Music on 29 October 1931, with Anne Roselle in the title role, Charlotte Boerner as Chrysothemis, Margarete Matzenauer as Klytaemnestra, Nelson Eddy as Orest, and Fritz Reiner conducting. Elektra received its UK premiere at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1910 with Edyth Walker in the title role and Thomas Beecham conducting at the first- ever performance of a Strauss opera in the UK. Performance history Įlektra is one of the most frequently performed operas based on classical Greek mythology, with a performance lasting-like the composer's earlier Salome-around 100 minutes.
The reception of Elektra in German-speaking countries was mostly divided along traditionalist and modernist lines. These works contrast highly with his earliest operas and his later period. Įlektra is the second of Strauss's two highly modernist operas (the other being Salome), characterized by cacophonous sections and atonal leitmotifs. Norwegian musicologist Ståle Wikshåland has analysed the use of time and temporality in the dramaturgy of Elektra. Some scholars detect hints of incest in Elektra's dysfunctional family relationships. Compared to Sophocles's Electra, the opera presents raw, brutal, violent, and bloodthirsty horror. The result is a very modern, expressionistic retelling of the ancient Greek myth. These changes tightened the focus on Elektra's furious lust for revenge. Other facets of the ancient story are completely excluded, in particular the earlier sacrifice by Agamemnon of his and Klytaemnestra's daughter Iphigenia, which was the motivation for Klytaemnestra's subsequent murder of Agamemnon. Various aspects from the myth are minimized as background to Elektra's character and her obsession. (The order of these conversations closely follows Sophocles' play.) The other characters are Klytaemnestra, her mother and one of the murderers of her father Agamemnon her sister, Chrysothemis her brother, Orestes and Klytaemnestra's lover, Aegisthus. Hofmannsthal's and Strauss's adaptation of the story focuses tightly on Elektra, thoroughly developing her character by single-mindedly expressing her emotions and psychology as she meets with other characters, mostly one at a time. While based on ancient Greek mythology and Sophocles' tragedy Electra, the opera is highly modernist and expressionist in style.
0 kommentar(er)
