Elektra, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 20 October 2023

Images unless otherwise stated: (c) Jakob Tillmann

Klytämnestra – Waltraud Meier
Elektra – Ricarda Merbeth
Chrysothemis – Vida Miknevičiūtė
Orest – Lauri Vasar
Aegisth – Stephan Rügamer
First Maid – Bonita Hyman
Second Maid, Train-bearer – Natalia Skrycka
Third Maid – Katharina Kammerloher
Fourth Maid – Anna Samuil
Fifth Maid – Roberta Alexander
Overseer, Confidante – Cheryl Studer
Young Servant – Siyabonga Maqungo
Old Servant – Olaf Bär
Orest’s Tutor – David Wakeham

Patrice Chéreau (director)
Vincent Huguet (assistant director)
Richard Peduzzi (set designs)
Caroline de Vivaise (costumes)
Dominique Bruguière (lighting)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Markus Poschner (conductor)  

For many of us, she has always been there. Not only ‘there’, somewhere, but there—at the top. It is difficult not to romanticise a little, though it is certainly not her style. She spoke briefly and with customary professionalism: she had had a wonderful career, done what she wanted to, and now it was time to say goodbye. ‘Tschüss.’ And with that, Waltraud Meier – the reason all of us, however avid Straussians we might be, were there – bade farewell to the stage. I saw her last Kundry and her last Isolde. I even heard her Marcellina last year, reuinted with Siegfried Jerusalem as Don Curzio (!) We had just heard and, crucially, seen her final Klytämnestra. 

Like the queen she portrayed with intelligence, dignity, a fresh eye and ear, and as keen a collaborative instinct as ever, this queen of the stage bewitched us once last time—and let us go. The audience, however, did not seem inclined to let her go, however many times the curtain fell. Bouquets continued to fly on to the stage, or sometimes, not quite reaching their target, into the pit. The ensemble – whatever fans might have felt, this was never a solo show – continued to come forward to receive applause. Then, once again, she briefly stepped forward, this time without microphone, to pay tribute to that constant presence in her career and in the musical lives we (felt we) had spent together: Daniel Barenboim. He had been in her thoughts all evening—and in her heart. Letting go is a difficult thing. Like her career, difficult decisions such as ruling Brünnhilde was not the right role for her included, this was supremely well judged and directed, as joyful as it was poignant. She never played the Marschallin, though she had offers; for some of us, at this moment she did. Life, music, theatre, go on. ‘Tschüss.’

 

The Klytämnestra we saw and heard was not the same as that of 2016 in this same Patrice Chéreau production, nor that (in my case at the cinema) from its incarnation slightly earlier that year in New York, still less that of Salzburg (Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s staging) in 2010. Chéreau’s production remains impressive in its provision of a frame – literally, in the case of Richard Peduzzi’s set – for human interactions. Fate can take care of itself. It may or may not be something more than the sum total of individual characters and their decisions, but here they are given due weight. And that includes the decisions of those playing their roles. Perhaps inevitably, in this performance the relationship between Elektra and Klytämnestra seemed still more central, more crucial than ever. Yet there was absolutely no grandstanding, indeed little even in the way of grandeur to it. The Staatskapelle Berlin may have prepared the way for a grand entrance, or better provided one, for the woman who emerged was a distressed, even disoriented mother, finding her way according to the text (Strauss and Hofmannsthal) and acting according to the precept that she needed her daughter – it was definitely her daughter, not just some other character – more than the other way around. There was a degree of pride: all that said, she remained a queen. But this was a queen in private, insofar as her attendants would ever permit a private sphere to exist, not in public: a woman compelled to transfer her political wiles to the domestic sphere. Sometimes she came as close to speech than to song: not because she could not sing, but rather because she realised she could speak. She held the stage through artistry, not image; through what she did on this occasion, not through what she had done in the past.

 

(c) Monika Rittershaus (2016)

Ricarda Merbeth’s Elektra offered an interesting complement, almost a child who retreated into the womb, or rather who would were it still available. That it was not was a large part of the problem—at least in this scene. Elsewhere, hers was a performance that lacked nothing in power yet likewise never forsook the realm of humanity. Vida Miknevičiūtė’s Chrysothemis brought further characteristics of both, as well as her own, into sharp relief: a portrayal as vividly sung as it was conceived. Lauri Vasar’s dark-toned Orest, brutalised, dangerous, and yet with more than a hint of his own fragility and neurosis, was similarly excellent. Throughout a cast that included singers such as Cheryl Studer, Roberta Alexander, and Olaf Bär, each seemed to bring out something new and interesting in another.

 

If Markus Poschner’s direction of the Staatskapelle Berlin tended often to be fleshing out, even making sense of, a world created by characters on stage rather than creating it – worlds away from, say, Daniele Gatti’s Salzburg cataclysm – that seemed in context at one with this general approach: almost a Kammerspiel. It was certainly not that the orchestra failed to speak, but not only did it owe as much to Mendelssohn as to Wagner, it reacted as much as it delineated. The stars, one our inevitable lodestar, may have been on stage but this proved the most collaborative of dramas. That, surely, was the proper and ultimate tribute. Tschüss.

Elektra: the opera of lockdown?

 

Elektra, Berlin Staatsoper, 29 October 2016

Schillertheater

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Orest's Tutor (Franz Mazura), Elektra (Evelyn Herlitzius) Aegisth (Stephan Rügamer) and Klytämnestra (Waltraud Meier)

 

Elektra – Evelyn Herlitzius

Chrysothemis – Adrianne Pieczonka
Klytämnestra – Waltraud Meier
Orest – Michael Volle
Aegisth – Stephan Rügamer
First Maid – Bonita Hyman
Second Maid, Train-bearer – Marina Prudenskaya
Third Maid – Katharina Kammerloher
Fourth Maid – Anna Samuil
Fifth Maid – Roberta Alexander
Overseer, Confidante – Cheryl Studer
Young Servant – Florian Hoffmann
Old Servant – Donald McIntyre
Orest’s Tutor – Franz Mazura

Patrice Chéreau (director)

Vincent Huguet, Peter McClintock (assistant directors)
Richard Peduzzi (set designs)
Caroline de Vivaise (costumes)
Dominique Bruguière (lighting)

Berlin State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Elektra

 

I was fortunate enough to see the Met broadcast of Patrice Chéreau’s Elektra in April. Conducted with white-heat intensity by Esa-Pekka Salonen, with the orchestra on exceptional form, a cast headed by Nina Stemme in the title role convinced this relative sceptic concerning cinema broadcasts that the experience might, in many ways, match that of being in the theatre. I shall spare you a half-baked discourse on liveness and mediation for now; there are others who might actually have interesting things to say on the subject. Comparison, however, is inevitable. What intrigued, if disappointed me, was that, on balance, and with certain exceptions, New York came off slightly better.

 

As I wrote last time, poor productions, performances being another matter, of Elektra are few and far between. Set designs tend to look very similar indeed, and the work itself seems to be one of those that is less amenable, or less welcoming, to radical reinterpretation. Perhaps that in part reflects Hofmannsthal’s own particular reworking of Sophocles. What would one do? Return to a putative original? Whatever for? Nevertheless, Chéreau’s humanism, and what I was – and still am – tempted to call feminism, does offer something new and convincing for a Konzept.

Klytämnestra and Elektra

 

It is hardly novel to consider Elektra as damaged, but here, one sees a woman – or is she a girl? – so damaged, so traumatised, that her illness almost is the story. What we see is surely real, whatever that might mean; but imagination can run alongside reality. Whether one experiences the close of the opera as catharsis is open to question, even to taste, perhaps even to one’s mood, but here there is absolutely, without question, none on stage. She participates more clearly, more directly, in Orest’s revenge than she normally would – so does his tutor, here played by Franz Mazura, well into his nineties! – and yet, in some sense, she appears almost to be a bystander. Her clumsy, shellshocked attempt to dance at the end, once again clashing with, undercutting, criticising our voyeuristic desires for enjoyment – do we shade into the realm of Lacanian jouissance? – remains a shocking thing indeed. And it focuses our attention somehow both on what she does and does not do, and upon the emptiness of Strauss’s C major conclusion.

 

Orest's Tutor

Has she emerged in a still worse position than she was before, or has what we have witnessed made no difference at all? Is the latter perhaps just as terrifying a prospect as the latter? A clash between generations, underlined by the presence onstage of veterans such as Mazura, Donald McIntyre, Cheryl Studer, and Roberta Alexander, has briefly offered a semblance of hope, the reunion of old retainers and abused children supremely touching here. Is not the real problem that of, as it were, the post-Atreus Baby Boomers? Yes, in a way, at least for now – although let us not forget how Klytämnestra herself has suffered – but that implies no hope for the future. People so damaged as Elektra and Orest: well, forget it...

 

Oddly, though, I think what I saw and understood – if indeed I understood it – may well have come across a little better on screen. Chéreau was a great film-maker, of course, but he was also a great man of the theatre. The unsparing nature of HD cinema had worked to the advantage of Stemme and also Waltraud Meier. I described their performances in New York as portrayals ‘that would have been astonishing had they been actresses in a spoken drama, a spoken filmed dramas’. Not being so close had its drawbacks in this case, especially when the Klytämnestra ‘was so much more rounded than the norm, indeed so much more rounded than I have ever heard’. One always needs to see Meier as well as hear her, and perhaps even more so at this stage of her career. But Evelyn Herlitzius’s Elektra, whilst an extraordinary achievement, by any standards, chilled me less than Stemme’s; Herlitzius, is I suppose, a less cool – to put it mildly – performer. She gave it her all, had us utterly enthralled, but for me, at least – and I realise this is an unfair criticism – she seemed perhaps less in tune with what I imagined to be Chéreau’s conception.

 

Adrianne Pieczonka once again gave as fine a performance as Chysothemis as one could hope to hear. The range of vocal colours alone was enough to satisfy the price of entry. Michael Volle was at least as impressive as Orest, finer still, I think, than New York’s excellent Eric Owens (although who cares?) Volle’s way with German words is second to none; their combination with as damaged, if differently so, a personality as Elektra’s made for powerful theatre indeed. There were no weak performances; the contributions from Mazura and Alexander in particular proved deeply moving.

 

Had I not heard Salonen, I might have had little quibble with Daniel Barenboim’s conducting. By most standards, it was excellent; the playing of the Staatskapelle Berlin, the occasional rough edge apart, most certainly was throughout. However, I missed a little the icy control of Salonen, perfectly complementing Stemme. Barenboim, almost always at his best in Wagner, is perhaps less of a Straussian. His gift for hearing a work as if in a single breath seemed slightly to desert him here; phrases and paragraphs were all present, though, and that whole was not so very far off. There remained a great deal to admire and to experience, and one cannot always have everything.

 

Elektra, Met Opera Live, 30 April 2016

Metropolitan Opera House, New York

(viewed at Curzon Cinema, Mayfair)

Elektra – Nina Stemme

Chrysothemis – Adrianne Pieczonka
Klytämnestra – Waltraud Meier
Orest – Eric Owens
Aegisth – Burkhard Ulrich
First Maid – Bonita Hyman
Second Maid – Maya Lahyani
Third Maid – Andrea Hill
Fourth Maid – Claudia Waite
Fifth Maid – Roberta Alexander
Overseer – Susan Neves
Young Servant – Mark Schowalter
Old Servant – Tilmann Rönnebeck
Orest’s tutor – James Courtney 

Patrice Chéreau (director)

Vincent Huguet (stage director)
Richard Peduzzi (set designs)
Caroline de Vivaise (costumes)
Dominique Bruguière (lighting)

Metropolitan Opera Chorus (chorus master: Donald Palumbo)
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

Poor productions – performances are another matter – of Elektra are few and far between. The work itself does so much of the work, quite apart from the striking similarity of so many set designs. This production, Patrice Chéreau’s last, was, however, quite different, not so much in terms of set designs, nor even costumes, although difference – genuinely meaningful difference there certainly was there – as in the directorial Konzept, and the harrowing, once-in-a-lifetime brilliance with which it is brought to dramatic life.

I might be tempted to call it feminist, and in a way it is, but it is above all profoundly human, profoundly Elektra’s story. Her experience has trauamatised her, destroyed her, made her ill, above all mentally, to an extent I have never previously witnessed; it threatens to do likewise to us. Whilst Chéreau is far too subtle a director to suggest, let alone to state, that the drama is all in Elektra’s head, it clearly is in part. How could it not be? Such is the nature of trauma. This is a woman so damaged, a daughter so damaged, a sister so damaged that there is no catharsis. She participates more clearly, more directly, in Orest’s revenge than she normally would, and yet remains at a certain remove from it. She dances, or attempts to, yet cannot, at least she cannot in the way that we, uneasy, terrified voyeurs might like; we violate her by watching her tentative, clumsy steps. At the end, she is not dead, nor is she triumphant; she is even more damaged, looking outward, at or into nothing in particular.

Nina Stemme’s performance in the role was – and this is certainly not a claim to be made lightly – perhaps the single greatest performance I have seen from her, most likely heard from her too. In the case of her and Waltraud Meier as Klytämnestra, these were performances that would have been astonishing had they been actresses in a spoken drama, a spoken filmed dramas. The unsparing nature of HD cinema for once enhanced rather than detracted. Stemme’s performance had everything: precision, line, total command and portrayal of her role. Her facial expressions were just as much part of that as her unerring ability to pitch, to shade, to connect the many, many notes of her part. And, of course, she had to be on stage for all but the very first few minutes. Never did she tire; never was she anything other than outstanding.

Meier’s Klytämnestra – Chéreau’s too, I presume, and Vincent Huguet‘s – was so much more rounded than the norm, indeed so much more rounded than I have ever heard. She was no mere grotesque; no figure of high camp. (Herodes will always win hands down in those stakes.) This was a mother we saw and heard: a flawed mother, but one with a human relationship between her and her daughter. We were led to recall, even though it is never stated her, what loss and agony she too had endured. Agamemnon had been no victim. The tenderness and nobility of this queen were an important part of a far more complex character than reductionism would have us believe. Strauss’s score was both agent and beneficiary in that respect. And yet, we seemed, if anything, to go beyond Strauss and Hofmannsthal – both forward to the concerns of our own time and back to Sophocles, indeed to Æscyhlus. Perhaps more to the point, we were invited to sympathise, to empathise, above all to bring our own experiences, and to find meaning in them and in the work.

 

Adrianne Pieczonka showed herself fully in command of Chrysothemis’s treacherous vocal line. More than that, she drew upon a full array of vocal-dramatic colours. The darkness of Eric Owens’s Orest chilled to the bone: there was humanity there, to be uncovered at the end of the recognition scene, but there was psychopathy too. What a luxury it was to have so fine an Alberich sing the role and perhaps even to bring something of that role to his performance. Burkhard Ulrich’s Aegisth did what it should in the short time allotted. All five maids – this is surely tribute both to Chéreau and to their performances – presented plausible individuals, not mere numbered appendages. If the Fifth Maid touched me most, that is surely in part a reflection of the role, but also of the extraordinary capabilities, apparently undimmed, of Roberta Alexander.

 

The Met Orchestra sounded magnificent. It is probably here that a cinema relay suffers most; even with excellent sound, the experience will always seem lesser than in the house. And so, if I missed a little of what orchestras such as the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Vienna Philharmonic at their greatest might bring, that most likely reflected the lack of ‘liveness’ rather than a shortcoming in performance. Esa-Pekka Salonen’s coldly modernist starting-point brought something quite different to the score from anything I can recall previously having heard. There was no doubting Salonen’s knowledge of, immersion in, ability to communicate the extreme complexity of Strauss’s orchestral writing. By the same token, there was no doubting his command of musico-dramatic pacing. The waltz-writing suffered not a jot, but there was as much steel, or perhaps platinum, as gold here. The question of this score’s relationship, or otherwise, to Schoenbergian expressionism is complex. One can argue the toss either way – except of course that there are multiple ways. It was a great strength of Salonen’s reading that one might have experienced it with equal justice in Schoenbergian or Schenkerian aural-analytical terms; indeed, more so even than in his Philharmonia Tristan, the either/or was refuted.

 

Grumbles about presentation: the Met’s website and the sheet available at the cinema on the way out only give cast details for the ‘major’ five; some Internet scouring found me most of the rest, although neither the Confidante nor the Trainbearer. Artists deserve to be credited. And might we kindly be spared the gushing banalities of Renée Fleming’s ’wonderful’ introductions? They do not improve with age. But the drama, Strauss at his very greatest,a was the thing. Nothing could detract from it; nothing came close.

Deutsche Oper Strauss-Wochen (2) - Elektra, 7 April 2016

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Elektra – Evelyn Herlitzius

Chrysothemis – Manuela Uhl
Klytämnestra – Doris Soffel
Orest – Tobias Kehrer
First Maid – Annika Schlicht
Second Maid – Rebecca Jo Loeb
Third Maid – Jana Kurucová
Fourth Maid – Fionnula McCarthy
Fifth Maid – Elbenita Kajtazi
Overseer – Stephanie Weiss
Confidante – Nicole Haslett
Trainbearer – Alexandra Hutton
Young Servant – James Kryshak
Orest’s tutor – Seth Carico
Aegisth – Clemens Bieber

Kirsten Harms (director)

Bernd Damovsky (designs)
Claudia Gotta (Spielleitung)
Silvana Schröder (choreography)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus master: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Donald Runnicles (conductor)  

With the second of these five evenings at the Deutsche Oper, we come to Strauss’s first collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal – and probably his (and their) greatest opera of all, Elektra. It may or may not be one’s ‘favourite’; such is a matter of personal taste. But the greatness of this relentless tragedy, which grabs one by the scruff of one’s neck and refuses to let one go for well-nigh a couple of hours, would be disputed by no one, even Theodor Adorno, notwithstanding his attack on its ‘entire final section,’ in which ‘banality is dominant’.

Is that how it seemed here? (The greatness, that is, rather than the alleged banality.) Yes, of course. We were in safe hands with Donald Runnicles and the excellent orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin. If I had a reservation concerning Runnicles’s conducting, it was that, in the longest term, it had a tendency towards the sectional. The post-Wagnerian melos flowed wonderfully within scenes, or subdivisions thereof, and the attention paid to characterisation, harmonic and timbral, of such sections was very much welcome. However, the connections between them sometimes were sometimes a little obscured. One can have both, as Semyon Bychkov showed so triumphantly at the Proms in 2014; but then, Bychkov arguably has no peer, certainly has very few peers, at least who are alive, in this music. That concert performance was one in a million, as anyone there would attest. This was a very fine performance in the theatre, with which no one could reasonably have been disappointed. Runnicles also offered considerable variety of pacing, which never jarred, and which complemented, interacted with, the variegation of the orchestral writing so thrilling brought to life by his players.

 

I am now entirely converted to the cause of Evelyn Herlitzius: what an artist! One performance in particular I had heard from her in the past had been somewhat problematical, although I admired her Kundry here in Charlottenburg a couple of years ago. Here that wildness of intonation had been tamed, but without damage to the wildness of characterisation, which was such that the most exalted comparisons with any great Elektra of the past would not have been in vain. The range of colourings in the voice, opening almost contralto-like, would be worthy of an essay in itself, but just as noteworthy was the dramatic use to which they were put, certainly responding to the words, yet with equal certainty leading them, challenging the seemingly indissoluble mixture of ‘Strauss-Hofmannsthal’ to ever-greater heights, readily yet thrillingly achieved. She inhabited, gave voice to, embodied the character of Elektra, standing in a line of singing-actresses which, for any Wagnerian, necessarily extends back to Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient. (And no, of course Schröder-Devrient did not sing Elektra; but imagine…!)

 

Doris Soffel was an imposing, vicious Klytämnestra. All singers in this role must navigate the treacherous boundaries of caricature, pantomime, even camp. Soffel did so with great success, tragedy enhanced rather than undermined. The Aegisth of Clemens Bieber I found rather rough-hewn vocally, although well enough acted. Manuela Uhl brought to life a splendidly sympathetic Chrysothemis, not without character flaws (to put it mildly!) but credible in the dramatic round. Tobias Kehrer’s Orest started stunned, even shellshocked, drained of his humanity, regained through a truly moving recognition scene with Elektra, and checked by what fate ordained he must go on to do. It was a chilling progression and regression, which reminded us that, possessed though she might be, Elektra is, in her way, as manipulative as they come, and that Orest is, by any standards, a deeply troubling character. The smaller roles were all well taken.

Alas, there is little to be said in favour of Kirsten Harms’s production. For the most part, until the end, it does not get in the way, but that is because it does not do anything much at all. Bernd Damovsky’s designs are impressive, and would doubtless be more so in a more involving production. (Most sets for Elektra tend to look pretty similar; this is no exception.) For the most part, the singers seemed to have to fend for themselves. Perhaps it was as much from this as from the pit, a new singer or two wandering on as another left the stage, that that sense of a ‘sectional’ quality had arisen; it was certainly much more pronounced scenically. As for the bizarrely choreographed final scene, in which Elektra was joined by strikingly hapless Furies (I assume that is who they were): more amdram than Sophocles, sadly. Even here, though, at least for the most part, the musical drama managed to rise above its scenic limitations.

 

Elektra, Vienna State Opera, 13 November 2015

Images: Wiener Staatsoper/Michael Pöhn

Vienna State Opera

Elektra – Nina Stemme

Chrysothemis – Gun-Brit Barkmin
Klytämnestra – Anna Larsson
Orest – Matthias Goerne
Aegisth – Herbert Lippert
First Maid – Monika Bohinec
Second Maid – Ilsyear Khayrullova
Third Maid – Ulrike Helzel
Fourth Maid – Caroline Wenborne
Fifth Maid – Ildikó Raimondi
Overseer – Donna Ellen
Young Servant – Thomas Ebenstein
Old Servant – Hans Peter Kammerer
Orest’s tutor – Il Hong
Confidante – Simina Ivan
Trainbearer – Aura Twarowska

Uwe Eric Laufenberg (director)

Rolf Glittenberg (set designs)
Marianne Glittenberg (costumes)
Andreas Grüter (lighting)

Chorus of the Vienna State Opera

Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Peter Schneider (conductor)

 

It almost seems wrong to be thinking and writing about a visit to the opera in the wake of the Paris attacks last night. Yet, beyond the justified claim that we should not be deterred from going about our business – there are, I think, some exceptions, but let us leave them on one side for now – we should also remember that art speaks of the human condition. It enables us to deal with what goes on around us: not, I hope, as mere escape, but as an exploration of some of the most fundamental issues with which we grapple. Strauss’s æstheticism continues to challenge us – and so it should. It will do so in different ways at different times, and that is all to the good.

 

Whilst Elektra is far too important a work to be simply, or even mostly, ‘about’ one particular character or artist, Nina Stemme was clearly a principal attraction in a very strong cast. She might not be how we all ‘imagine’ Elektra, but such a situation can often present a justified challenge to our preconceptions. Stemme proved tireless, constantly musical and, just as important, constantly communicative with Hofmannsthal’s words, and a fine actress. It was interesting to note, and I do not think this was simply a matter of acclimatisation on my part, that she looked more ‘like’ the Stemme we know from other performances as the evening went on. To start with, Marianne Glittenberg’s costume cunningly doing its work here, I am not sure that I should have recognised her with my eyes alone. A Lieder-like approach to text as music and words, though, marked out her artistry. And the accuracy, volume, and tonal quality of her climaxes – there are many! – would have given Birgit Nilsson a run for her money, although the sound is of course quite different. Indeed, Stemme struck an excellent balance between strength of character and necessary – for survival – ability to adapt, wheedling herself, if only temporarily, back into the affections of her mother and detested stepfather.

 

With the exception of a weakly-sung Aegisth, a part often given to former Siegfrieds – surely Vienna could have done better than this! – the cast was excellent. All of the ‘smaller’ roles were very well taken, attesting to the casting in depth that a great company can offer. For me, Thomas Ebenstein’s lyric tenor, as agile as the singer on stage, and the warm humanity of Ildikó Raimondi’s Fifth Maid – what a gift of a role! – stood out, but this is definitely a case of almost all deserving prizes.

 

Gun-Brit Barkmin grasped what I assume to have been Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s concept – and of course, the work’s concept, at least implicitly – of Chrysothemis as a young woman repressing, somewhat kinkily, her adulthood, Marianne Glittenberg’s over-sized, little-girl costume again making the point strongly in visual terms. Barkmin grasped it and ran with it, helpless, but perhaps – we could never quite tell – knowingly so, again as a survival mechanism in impossible times, domestically and politically, whilst maintaining as impressive control over Strauss’s musical lines as she had Berg’s in Wozzeck last month. Barkmin was impressive in Semyon Bychkov’s magnificent Proms performance of Elektra in 2014; here she was more so still and, crucially, offering a different reading according to context.

 

Anna Larsson’s portrayal of Klyämnestra was also in its way a revelation. I have grown so accustomed to thinking of this wonderful contralto voice ‘simply’ as the earth-voice of sincerity and truth in the Ring and in Mahler, that it came as quite a jolt to hear and indeed to see her in so different a role. Again, visually I should not have recognised her. I am not sure I have heard a true contralto sing the part before; it is, of course, rare nowadays to hear a true contralto at all. Yet, not only was the musical result beautiful, although not too beautiful, Larsson’s stage presence matched her vocal artistry, again in a way that confounded narrow expectations based solely upon narrow, personal experience.

 

Matthias Goerne proved a chilling, psychopathic Orest. When I had heard him previously, his approach had been, for want of a better word, more ‘intellectual’. Here, again apparently grasping the needs of the moment, this undoubtedly intelligent artist sounded splendidly instinctive. (It is not that the two are polar opposites, or in any sense exclusive, but they are often treated as if they are such.) He sounded and looked – the costume initially concealed him more than Elektra’s had her – like a voice from beyond: almost a male Erda, perhaps a Charon or a Pluto. We could not but doubt that he brought death, nor that he was deeply damaged by experience. The culmination of the Recognition Scene, in which brother and sister relied as much upon their sense of touch as their sense of sight – perhaps they have seen far too much truly to be able to see any more – proved both moving and provocative in the expectation of something incestuous, only to be thwarted, not the least intelligent of Laufenberg’s double moves.

Peter Schneider seemed almost a different conductor from when I had heard him conduct the work, disappointingly, in Dresden almost a year ago. Everything was much sharper, and the Vienna orchestra was in far better shape than its Straussian rival. (Perhaps, last December, that was something to do with Christian Thielemann having had the pick of the bunch the previous evening, but such variation remains difficult to account for entirely.) Strauss’s score danced with exuberance and with sickly longing; it lingered only too long early in what seemed almost an interminable Recognition Scene, a rare lapse. The phantasmagorical array of colours, harmonic as well as instrumental, which the composer conjures up was well served by the Vienna orchestra. If it were not quite at the level of inspiration of Daniele Gatti with these players in Salzburg in 2010, it was still a very fine orchestral performance, that golden Vienna string tone unmistakeable. There were, moreover, a good few passages which seemed, tantalisingly, to reach out towards Erwartung.

Laufenberg’s production is intelligent throughout and, for the work, intriguingly different, although not for the sake of ‘difference’. I say ‘for the work’, since most Elektra sets seem to end up looking more or less the same. There is an element of the familiarly granitic and fascistic in Rolf Glittenberg’s designs, but they do not overwhelm as often they do. (Not that I am arguing such designs should not; it is not, however, the only way.) Accentuating the domesticity, as it were, seems very much in line with the Strauss-Hofmannsthal Freudian approach to the myth. And death hangs over the piece with a visual stench that would pack quite a punch, could I bring myself to mix metaphors quite so flagrantly. (If I am shamelessly having my cake and eating it in the preceding sentence, so, in many respects does the work itself.)

 

A lift connects the palace proper to the courtyard, although we do not necessarily notice it to begin with, the action very much taking charge of itself. (I am not sure that I had previously noticed quite so strong a kinship between the opening scene and its sister in Maeterlinck’s, though not Debussy’s, Pelléas.) It is in that that Klytämnestra descends (and Aegisth never manages to ascend). Behind the glass, she already seems encased: almost a taxidermist’s objet d’art. Her entrance – with that music, she simply has to make an entrance – thus proved, if one can have such a thing, a slightly understated coup de théâtre. If I mention her having a wheelchair and Elektra a suitcase, cries of ‘cliché’ will doubtless issue forth – and often, I should sympathise. But Elektra prevaricating over packing her bags is hardly an inappropriate idea here and, more importantly, the specific use of the wheelchair offers an interesting and indeed surprising commentary not only upon Klytämnestra, but also on her relationship with her daughter, which after all lies at the heart of the drama. The queen does not need it at all, or at least she sometimes realises that she does not. She is in many respects keeping up appearances, although for whom? Her retinue? Which way might they turn, if the going gets tough? Their indecision later on subtly underlines the point. Is there an ‘outside’ the palace and its environs? Is the queen’s act for them? We are not sure, and that seems to me quite an interesting reading of Strauss and Hofmannsthal on Sophocles: extending their seeming lack of interest in the political and turning it in – or should that be ‘out’? – upon itself. Her confidant and trainbearer inject her with something. Who is controlling whom? And yet, when they are out of the way, when finally she can settle herself to speak with her daughter as something approaching – at least in House of Atreus terms – her mother, Klytämnestra can walk freely: discuss, perhaps even take some agency for the self-interpretation of, her dreams. Elektra at one point takes her place in the wheelchair. Is that not in a sense right, given all she has suffered? And yet, she cannot of course remain there, or all would fail.

I have dwelled upon that particular scene, since it seemed to me unusually central to interpretation of the work and production on this evening. Its presentation is also typical of Laufenberg’s impressively text-based approach to the work. He is not necessarily a director to set off music against words – often a fruitful approach with Strauss – but not everyone can offer the layered approach, at least all the time, of a Stefan Herheim. (This is yet another work in which I should love to see what he might accomplish.) Laufenberg’s, however, is a thoughtful, faithful, yet far from subservient reading, to which I should readily return. The treatment of Elektra’s Dance is a case in point, and here there was perhaps a deeper engagement with the music too. I still think that, as I wrote when discussing that Proms performance, to speak, as Adorno did, of the discontinuity ‘between the wildness of most of Strauss’s music in Elektra and its blissfully triadic conclusion’ is wilful. However, there is an element of (false?) relapse here; the emergence of strikingly beautiful, untarnished, unreal (?) young waltzers, offering the banal hope of a utopian future amidst Mycenaean devastation, knocked sidewise by the unexpected turn of the music and carrying Elektra off with them, makes a point I thought not un-Adornian, although perhaps more fruitful. What, then, are we to make of the shell-shocked Chrysothemis, who remains?

 

Elektra, Semperoper Dresden, 15 December 2014

Semperoper

 

Elektra – Elena Pankratova

Chrysothemis – Manuela Uhl

Klytämnestra – Jane Henschel

Orest – Markus Marquardt

Aegisth – Jürgen Müller

First Maid – Constance Heller

Second Maid – Stephanie Atanasov

Third Maid – Christa Mayer

Fourth Maid – Roxana Incontrera

Fifth Maid – Nadja Mchantaf

Overseer – Sabine Brohm

Young Servant – Simeon Esper

Old Servant – Tilmann Rönnebeck

Orest’s tutor – Matthias Henneberg

Confidante – Andrea Ihle

Trainbearer – Christiane Hossfeld

 

Barbara Frey (director)

Muriel Gerstner (set designs)

Bettina Walter (costumes)

Gérard Cleven (lighting)

Micaela von Marcard (dramaturgy)

 

Chorus  of the Saxon State Opera (chorus master: Wolfram Tetzner)

Staatskapelle Dresden

Peter Schneider (conductor)

 

Almost anything would have been an anti-climax following the Semperoper’s Rosenkavalier the previous day, but, odious comparisons aside, there was still something disappointing to the experience of so routine an Elektra as my final instalment of Strauss Year. Barbara Frey’s production was new earlier this year, but frankly it already looked far more old and tired than Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s staging of the next Strauss-Hofmannsthal collaboration, which had first been seen in 2000. There really did not seem to be very much to it at all. Few set designs for Elektra have in my experience looked radically different. Here there is less granite, whether literal or figurative, than often, but the action still unfolds in what appears to be a royal palace and household that have seen better days. An inscription referring to royal justice hangs pregnantly, ironically, over proceedings, but alas little of what we see lives up to our anticipations. Perhaps there was simply not enough rehearsal for a repertory performance; there was definitely a sense of the performers being left to fend for themselves. Odd touches, such as child actors appearing on stage during the Recognition Scene, so as to remind us that Elektra and Orest last saw each other when children, really add nothing. One would have to have been taking very little notice at all not to have grasped that dramatic point already.

 

Lothar Koenigs was apparently ill, and had been replaced by the veteran replacement-conductor, Peter Schneider. Again, there was a strong sense of lack of rehearsal. Schneider’s vague, listless direction of the score suggested a run-through rather than a performance in any emphatic sense. The Staatskapelle Dresden could doubtless not put on a bad performance of Strauss if it tried, but by its standards, it was hardly on form. There was a distinct lack of focus, too much of Pierre Monteux’s ‘indifference of mezzo forte’; again, the contrast with the Rosenkavalier was glaring. When the full force of the orchestra seemed finally to be unleashed, at the very close, it seemed too little, too late.

 

Elena Pankratova was the best reason to have heard this performance. She probably needed more help in terms of stage direction, but her vocal performance was generally strong, speaking of a strong musico-dramatic commitment throughout. This was indeed a musical performance, not a house of horrors exhibition of screaming. Manuela Uhl’s Chrysothemis offered gleaming sound, though her intonation wavered a little too often. Jane Henschel is a fantastic singing-actress, but here she erred too much for me on the side of caricature. Again, perhaps stronger direction, both stage and musical, would surely have helped create something more.  Markus Marquardt proved a sadly wooden Orest, but Jürgen Müller offered an uncommonly well-sung Aegisth. Not a vintage evening, then, not even close; but I should forgive almost anything for that Rosenkavalier.

 

Prom 59 - BBC SO/Bychkov - Elektra, 31 August 2014

 

Images: BBC/Chris Christodoulou
Dame Felicity Palmer as Klytemnestra

 

 

Royal Albert Hall

Elektra – Christine Goerke

Chrysothemis – Gun-Brit Barkmin

Klytemnestra – Dame Felicity Palmer

Orest – Johan Reuter

First Maid – Katarina Bradić

Second Maid – Zoryana Kushpler

Third Maid – Hanna Hipp

Fourth Maid – Marie-Eve Munger

Fifth Maid – Iris Kupke

Overseer – Miranda Keys

Young Servant – Ivan Turšić

Orest’s tutor – Jongmin Park

Aegisth – Robert Künzli

Justin Way (stage director)

BBC Singers (chorus master: Paul Wiegold)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

 

Anti-Strauss sentiment, Strauss-scepticism, call it what you will: it still runs high. In some ways, that is not a bad thing: the ‘case of Strauss’, which I have written about before and which I shall discuss further in a chapter of my new book, to be published next month, is complex and fascinating, and is certainly not to be resolved with a one-liner here or an affirmation or otherwise there. Strauss’s æstheticism, perhaps ironically, given its insistence upon the value of art as art, leads us to greater consideration of æsthetic questions than the work of many other composers. That holds even when, perhaps particularly when, one is not of a prosecuting party ranging from Karl Kraus (‘certainly more of a stock company [Aktiengesellschaft] than a genius’) to Stravinsky  (‘I would like to admit all Strauss’s operas to whichever purgatory punishes triumphant vulgarity. Their musical substance is cheap and poor; it cannot interest a musician today.’) However, even those who disdain much of Strauss’s later work – often, to my mind, for less than convincing reasons – will admit their admiration for Elektra. It may not be many people’s ‘favourite’ Strauss opera, but most, I suspect, will consider it his greatest. Adorno, who went to the extreme of claiming that ‘everything that follows Rosenkavalier  is either applied or commercial art,’ and who, in my view, quite wrongly, even took Strauss to task for the ‘entire final section of Elektra, [in which] banality is dominant,’ admitted the opera to a line of development ‘from Tristan to Elektra to Schoenberg’s Erwartung’.

 

And so, whilst in principle it was somewhat depressing that the Proms elected to perform the three most popular of Strauss’s operas for his anniversary season – surely if we were to hear, for instance, Friedenstag anywhere in this country, it would be here – it was difficult, both in principle, and certainly in practice, with so fine a performance, to object too strongly, or indeed at all. Justin Way’s semi-staging worked as well as it had for the Proms Ring last year. Often, though not slavishly, following Hofmannsthal’s explicit directions – Elektra and Klytemnestra did ‘stand eye to eye’, and to very good effect – it permitted the work to ‘speak for itself’, although in any case it generally does in full stagings, which tend perhaps more strongly to resemble one another than do those of any other opera that springs to my mind.

 

Semyon Bychkov, the Maids, and the Overseer

 

 

As with that Ring, the orchestra took centre stage, the BBC Symphony Orchestra on excellent form throughout. (The occasional moment of tiredness towards the end can readily be forgiven for any orchestra.) And likewise, we were fortunate indeed in the choice of conductor: Daniel Barenboim for the Ring; for Elektra, Semyon Bychkov, who was, if memory serves me correctly, the first conductor I heard in this work. Yet that should not be taken, any more than it had with a Ring that included Nina Stemme and Andreas Schager, to imply a downgrading of the vocal element. In proper Wagnerian style – and in this, if avowedly not with respect to metaphysics, or the lack thereof, Strauss remained a Wagnerian through and through – the various elements of the performance, even in a minimal staging, strengthened one another.

 

That could be heard in the first scene, in which a very nicely differentiated group of maids interacted with flickering intensity with conducting which really did emphasise that clichéd taking after Mendelssohn’s fairy music. The foresight of the Fifth Maid, Iris Kupke, was experienced as much in performance as in work. Miranda Keys’s Overseer was again well differentiated, though not exaggeratedly so, from the ‘mere’ maids. And then, in what might call the ‘interlude’ in which Elektra emerges from the house, Bychkov ensured that Strauss’s waltz writing disconcertingly reared its head and pointed ahead.

 

Christine Goerke’s Elektra announced herself in deeper voice than one often hears: more feminine, less harpy, though so certainly not lacking in volume where necessary. Sepulchral trombones complemented her lament, intensifying those baleful calls of ‘Agamemnon’ that were to follow. Throughout her lengthy soliloquy, Bychkov conjured up – and the BBC SO delivered – a truly Straussian orchestral phantasmagoria, in colour and in harmony. ‘Agamemnon! Vater!’: the orchestra sent shivers down the spine. But equally compelling was the tenderness from Goerke and orchestra alike, never more so than after ‘zeig dich deinem Kind!’ A daughter’s affection may have been twisted but, on one level, it remained childishly simple. Rhythmic and melodic details, for instance the baying of the dogs, both made their point in themselves and, when it came to material to be developed later on, sowed their musico-dramatic seeds with both mystery and expectant, Fatal clarity.

 

 

Gun-Brit Barkmin as Chrysothemis

The following scene, with Chrysothemis, was interesting. Elektra’s blood-curdling ‘spaltete dein Fleisch’ stood at one extreme. The flowering, in more than one sense, of Gun-Brit Barkmin’s Chrysothemis intrigued, if anything, more still. During her first lines, I wondered whether Barkmin would prove a little underpowered, even anonymous. But, as a panoply of woodwind colour to rival the composer’s ‘Indian summer’ worked its queasy magic, it became clear that this was a sister who would grow into her role at the crucial point: the voicing of what, in context, seems her very weird – or is it very ‘normal’? who knows any more? – obsession with child-bearing. Thereafter this was a woman indeed.

 

A woman indeed of a different nature is Klytemnestra. Her orchestrally-voiced arrival sent shivers down the spine, enhanced or perhaps ‘realised’ by Felicity Palmer’s splendidly grande-dame procession. If Palmer’s voice is vocally not what it was, it frankly mattered not a jot. But whilst this extraordinary confrontation worked itself out in words and singing, the orchestra broadened our terms of musical reference. You, yourself are a goddess, Elektra told her mother. What, then, did it mean to hear apparent echoes of Siegfried’s ‘Forest Murmurs’? Well, there is honesty in the German forest, but there is also redress, as Mime would find to his cost. The malevolent replanting of those Wagnerian seeds was suggestive, whether coincidental or otherwise. Fafner-like brass deepened the very real agony and sickness we heard from Palmer’s magnificently attentive outlining of that ‘Etwas’ which had fallen upon her. As for the intensity and sheer volume with which Goerke despatched ‘ich steh’ da und seh’ dich endlich sterben’ and likewise ‘der jauchzt und kann sich seines Lebens freun!’ What can one say other than superlative? Perfectly matched, by the way, by the orchestra as they stood, in that aforementioned scene, ‘eye to eye’.

 

Brittle, sardonic, orchestral mock-heroism ‘accompanied’ the appearance of the Young Servant. Sheer orchestral depravity ‘beautifully’ captured, in all its bizarre mixture of sincerity and insincerity, Elektra’s hymn to her sister’s female form. And finally, the relief of Orest’s arrival: not quite the first male voice but, my goodness, it sounded as if it were! Johan Reuter’s delivery of this difficult role brought bluff anger rather than the more ‘intellectual’ approach of a Matthias Goerne. There is room for both, but here, Reuter felt ‘right’. The final recognition hit as it should: a truly shattering dissonance on Elektra’s ‘Orest’ would be followed up by too beautiful remembrance of her former self, bathed in a narcissism that seemed almost literally, or at least verbally, skin-deep.

 

I do not know whether Palmer delivered her own off-stage scream. Whoever did it deserves mention in her own right, for it vied with the orchestral response – and Goerke’s truly terrifying steely response: Triff noch einmal!’ No compassion here, thank you. Again, Strauss’s insidious waltzing proved thematically, dramatically pregnant in the scene with Aegisth (a competent but less than exciting Robert Künzli). Rosenkavalier seemed less around the corner than already present as, following Elektra’s strange courtesies, he entered the house.

 

Christine Goerke as Elektra

Somehow, the voices of the BBC Singers seemed more than usually akin to Elektra’s ‘voices’ in a psychological sense. It was probably partly a matter of not seeing the singers, perhaps also a matter of the acoustic. Whatever the reason, it added an interesting, appropriately psychoanalytical deadliness to the final events. The insincerity, in context, of C major may here have been Strauss’s – and Bychkov’s, and the orchestra’s – crowning achievement. To speak, as Adorno did, of the discontinuity ‘between the wildness of most of Strauss’s music in Elektra and its blissfully triadic conclusion’ seems at the best of times wilful. Blissful? About as much as Handel’s use of the major mode in the ‘Dead March’ from Saul. After a brief period of ‘release’ with a ‘true’ operatic duet between the sisters, there came the final dramatic bludgeoning. And Elektra fell as shatteringly on stage as she did in the orchestra.