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, 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.