Sunday 22 April at 6.00pm on RNZ Concert
Metropolitan Opera 2018 Season
STRAUSS: Elektra
Shortly after conquering the opera world with his scandalous masterpiece Salome, Richard Strauss turned to Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s recent adaptation of Sophocles’s Electra for his next project. The resulting opera is an intense and still-startling work that unites the commanding impact of Greek tragedy with the unsettling insights of early-20th-century Freudian psychology. The drama unfolds in a single act of rare vocal and orchestral power.
Elektra......................... Christine Goerke
Chrysothemis.............. Elze van den Heever
Klytämnestra............... Michaela Schuster
Aegisth........................ Jay Hunter Morris
Orest............................ Mikhail Petrenko
Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra/Yannick Nézet-Séguin (EBU)
The story takes place in Mycenae, Greece, some years after the end of the Trojan War. This mythically resonant era has inspired opera composers for centuries, including Monteverdi, Gluck and Mozart.
The orchestra for Elektra is often cited as the largest for any repertory opera. It opens and closes the drama with a crashing motive that represents Agamemnon, Elektra’s father, who even in death dominates the lives of his family.
The score encompasses an astonishing range of musical color: there are moments of sublime lyricism when the characters express tenderness or love, and there is brutal, harsh dissonance when they are at (or beyond) the bounds of sanity.