taking up the axe
by Douglas Messerli
taking up
the axe
by Douglas Messerli
Hugo von Hofmannsthal (libretto,
based on his own adaptation of the Sophocles tragedy), Richard Strauss
(composer) Elektra / the production
Howard Fox and I saw was a Metropolitan Opera HD live production on Saturday,
April 30, 2016
Stemme transformed the wounded woman,
desperate to revenge her father Agamemnon’s death, from a somewhat indecisive
Hamlet-like figure into a character absolutely ready and willing to accomplish
the act. If only she had easy access to the house; in this version she appears
to have been locked out. And if only she were not a woman or had an ally in her
sister, the more rational yet more conventional Chrysthemis (the splendid
Adrianne Pieczonka), she would take up the axe and whack her mother, Klytämmestra
(Waltraud Meier) and step-father Aegisth (Burkhard Ulrich) more than 40 whacks.
The powerful queen, who cannot sleep because of her recurring
nightmares, spends most of her days trying out various sacrifices to appease
the gods. In other words, the Palace of Mycenae is quite obviously a bloody,
bloody place, which even the timid Chrysthemis seeks to escape. Is it any
wonder that Elektra has taken her bedding into the palace courtyard—beautifully
designed by Richard Peduzzi—to live like a dog?
From her totally outsider position, at
least, she can hurl her hateful vindictives almost without reaction. It is only
when the distraught queen expresses her fears and, for a few intense moments
actually attempts to communicate with her hateful daughter, that she opens
herself up to attack, with Elektra demanding the one sacrifice Klytämmestra is
unwilling to make—her own life.
If Elektra is willing to act, she cannot, in the society of her day,
actually commit the act. It is not, like Hamlet, that her intellect has created
an impasse, but simply a matter of male power and privilege, which maddens her
even more than the murder of her father. Unlike Strauss’s Salome, who uses her beauty and wit to destroy, von Hofmannsthal’s
Elektra is a victim of her society, blocked from the ability to achieve her
deed by her own sex—all the more galling because of her personal strength. She
may be mad, but she is strong enough to survive even the loss of her youthful
beauty and feminine appeal—aspects of her reality that she has willingly given
up to her cause.
It is Orest (Eric Owens), of course, who has also been hounded out of
this society, who must return to achieve the revenge. But even he, who has
perhaps suffered even more than Elektra, is appalled by his sister’s appearance
and demeanor. Although the two sing lovingly to one another, almost—despite
this opera’s near-barbaric whirlwind of orchestration (evidently one of the
largest orchestras in the Metropolitan’s history)—a love duet, after achieving
the dreadful deed he walks away with seeming disgust, alike Herod’s final
disgust of his daughter.
Despite the unforgettable performances by all of this production’s
leads, celebrated with a long, standing ovation by both audience and even the
orchestra (something I have never seen before), the real wonder of the opera,
given von Hofmannsthal’s highly abbreviated libretto, was Strauss’ marvelous
score which literally, under Esa-Pekka Salonen’s baton, swirled up the action
into a near tornado of beauteous dissonance. From the pounded tympanum chords
of the opera’s opening cry of “Agamemnon” to its last whorls of strings,
Strauss’ music says nearly everything that this short opera has to say, music
which I still can hear today, a half-week away from the Metropolitan HD
broadcast.
*The opera premiered at Semper
Opernhaus in Dresden in 1909, with a performance at the Manhattan Opera in New
York in 1910.
Los Angeles, May 3, 2016
Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (May 2016).
No comments:
Post a Comment