Richard Strauss’s Elektra @ The Philharmonic
Dear troglodytes and dettes,
I would appreciate it if you would kindly put down your pork rinds and mute the Jets game long enough to read this brief message. The Philharmonic is staging Strauss’ Elektra. Lorin Maazel is conducting. He is a good conductor, the Philharmonic is a good orchestra, and Deborah Polaski is a good singing lady. And the evening as a whole will probably prove slightly more edifying than whatever churlish shit you were otherwise planning to do in your douche palace on the Upper East Side. Go. Buy. Tickets.
That is all.
RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949)Elektra (1909)
Though Der Rosenkavalier is probably Richard Strauss’s most beloved and most widely-performed opera, it was two earlier shocking one-acters that made his name fodder for the tabloids and ignited international scandals: Salome in 1905 and Elektra in 1909. Both title characters are young women, obsessed with getting what they want and then paying for it: Salome gets—and kisses—the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter and is crushed to death by the palace guards; and the hysterical Elektra gets revenge for the death of her father Agamemnon and then lurches into madness in a bizarre “waltz macabre.” No one could carry off such unspeakable tales of horror better than Richard Strauss. Elektra pushes the envelope of opera in its re-telling of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy. The chilling but fascinating score for Elektra was set upon a libretto by the great Austrian poet and playwright, Hugo von Hofmannsthal—the first of six collaborations. The story of the dysfunctional family is simple to relate. Elektra’s mother Klytämnestra and her lover Aegisth have killed Agamemnon, father of Elektra and Chrysothemis. Elektra, living like a haunted wild beast among filth, mourns, laments, and wails over the death of her beloved father (her aria calling his name shakes the rafters) and longs for atonement.
