Thread by @david_m_wagner

1/ R. Strauss's 90-min 1-acter of obsession and fulfilment has been putting the fun in dysfunctional and leaving audiences plastered to the backs of their seats since 1909. If you have any sympathy for Klytemnestra, this is not the show for you. This prodn makes her

https://twitter.com/MetOpera/status/1375204608017117185

2/ less of a wreck than we usually see, but c'mon man, her entrance music - maybe the best in opera - depicts a collapsing harridan, sacrificing bulls every night in vain effort to keep nightmares away, and leaning on two mysterious aides, the Confidante and the Train-Bearer. ...

3/ These, a/w/a the general Freudian reworking of the material from Aeschylus's Choephori and Sophocles's Electra, are the work of Hugo von Hofmannstahl, Viennese high-modern playwright and frequent Strauss librettist. Likewise, stay away if you're an Aegisthus fan, but I can't

4/ imagine why anyone would be. For Klytemnestra the excuse is sometimes made that, when she killed her husband Agamemnon with the help of her lover Aegisthus, she was only doing it bc she was pissed that Ag had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia so as to dislodge his fleet

5/ from the Suez Canal (or wherever - Aulis, I think) and get to Troy. Meh. A likely story, most likely. IIRC Aeschylus doesn't even allude to this in his Agamemnon, and in any case, Iphigenia does not even exist in the Hofmannsthal/Strauss retelling of the completion of

6/ Elektra's revenge. No - here, Klytemnestra and Aegisthus killed Agamemnon years ago bc they were in a weird co-dependent rel and wanted to rule unthretened in Mycenae. They even sent away Agamemnon's and Klyt's son Orestes. Why? The q is raised in the the Elektra/Klytemnestra

7/ confrontation that dominates the 1st half of this short opera. "We sent them gold so they wd raise him as a king's son." "You lie! You sent them gold so they wd kill him!" Klytemnestra, reduced to blubbering by Elektra's predictions of revenge, suddenly revives when

8/ a rumor arrives that Orestes is dead. Well, don't believe rumors, knowwhatimsayin? 'Tswhat happens when Klyty & Aegi read the NYT, like all powerful ppl. If they watched Fox, they'd know Orestes is on his way home, and x years of waiting are about the end for Elektra.

9/ And when they end, Elektra has nothing left to live for, except to dance in celebration, as she always said she would.

"Be silent, and dance.
I bear the burden of joy,
And I must lead you in the dance.
For those as happy as we, one this is fitting:
Be silent, and dance!"

10/ Nina Stemme is Elektra. Adrienne Pieczonka is Chrysothemis, the gentle sister apparently invented by Sophocles and carried forward by Hofmannsthal to contrast with Elektra as the portrait of feminine normalcy. Waltraud Meier is Klytemnestra, here in a sane pencil-skirt

11/ instead of the usual shredded red robe, but with the abundant amulets that her lyrics refer to. Orestes is the awesome bass-baritone Eric Owens, and his tutor - a mysterious character with only one line but carefully described in the libretto as an older man with fiery eyes,

12/ is Kevin Short, a rising comprimario bass who, usefully, looks like Owens. Burkhard Ulrich, a tenor I had never heard of b4 this show, takes the part of Aegisthus - an extremely unheroic part for which Strauss nonetheless requested a heroic tenor, perhaps to reflect

13/ a military past that the man cast off once he found in Klyty a reliable source of political and sexual satisfaction. Thus, Karl Bǒhm was in line with Strauss's request when he cast Heldentenor Fritz Uhl in this part, whereas Solti was not when he made the choice - very

14/ dramatically effective, I must say - to assign it to über-character-tenor Gerhard Stolze.

Finnish/international superconductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is in the pit, and I say - downbeat, Maestro!