Richard Strauss's Elektra is rarely performed in New York, in part because it includes two very demanding roles for sopranos. But for this production--a revival of Otto Schenk’s 1992 staging--the Met has two highly capable stars: Britain's Susan Bullock, a veteran of 50 performances in the title role, and Deborah Voigt, as Elektra's sister, Chrysothemis. Poet-playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal wrote the libretto based on his own play about the vengeful repercussions of the murder of King Agamennon by his wife Klytamnestra and her lover Aegisth.
Program Details
Music by Richard Strauss
Text in German by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, after Greek tragedies by Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus
The Cast:
Conductor: Fabio Luisi
Elektra: Susan Bullock
Chrysothemis: Deborah Voigt
Klytämnestra: Felicity Palmer
Aegisth: Wolfgang Schmidt
Orest: Evgeny Nikitin
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Comments [2]
This opera is not played so much because of the vocal demands put on performers (Elektra and Klytamenestra are fiendishly difficult for the soloist).
It's not at all because people don't like Elektra because of the "yelling and screaming" or because people think that the music is "disgusting German music." Some people are truly ignorant.
It is not played more because who can listen to hours to kvetching and yelling and screaming. It is a disgusting piece of Germanic music.
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