Richard Strauss: Elektra

Last night I attended a performance of Elektra by Richard Strauss, to a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The production was directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski. The performance space was the second of the festival's large halls the Felsenreitschule also known as the "Haus für Mozart." The Felsenreitschule was the old Winter Riding Academy, converted to a concert hall from the 1960s.

The program for the concert is a hefty 175 page book, roughly half in German, half in English. I should have spent yesterday studying it! I am largely a newcomer to opera and wanted to see this performance largely because I am not familiar with the Strauss operas, excellent examples of early 20th century modernism. The director points out the historical context of the work, noting that only thirty years before the opera was first produced, in 1909, Heinrich Schliemann made his considerable archeological discoveries: the city of Troy actually existed! The world of Homer was real. Only a few years later Schliemann turned his attention to Mycenae, the setting of this opera, where he excavated the ruined city of Agamemnon. At the same time, Freud was uncovering the buried worlds of the unconscious. This is the context of the opera.

At the same time, the story is one of high Classical Greek tragedy. The recognition scene between Electra and Orestes recalls similar ones in Homer when Odysseus returns home. The central characters are the three women: Clytemnestra, unfaithful wife of Agamemnon whose lover Aegisthus kills him when he returns from Troy, Electra, tortured by her need for vengeance on her mother Clytemnestra, and her younger sister, Chrysothemis, who longs for a normal life with children away from this crazed world of murder and revenge. The two main male characters, Orestes and Aegisthus, are relatively secondary roles. Agamemnon, who does not appear in the opera, is nonetheless present in the orchestra in the form of a characteristic leitmotif.

The stage set was simple, but unusual with a single glass-boxed room (that late in the opera traverses the stage left to right), a shallow lap pool and that's it. The setting was enriched with video projections on the back wall. Much of the set was the simple, rustic walls of the riding school, which provided a suitable environment.

The rich orchestral score was one of the great pleasures of the evening: a marvel of orchestration it spanned the gamut between tender, lyrical beauty, as in when Electra and Orestes recognize one another, and the raging climax at the end when she dances herself to death, ending the opera.

After a few cool, rainy days, yesterday was pleasant and I got a photo of the entrance to the hall:

UPDATE: Oh, and here is a photo of the large lobby in which you can obtain beverages and snacks before the performance and at intermission if there is one.