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| Operas by Richard Strauss |
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Guntram (1894) |
- See Mourning Becomes Electra for a reference to the 1967 opera, based on the 1931 Eugene O'Neill play.
Elektra is a one-act opera by Richard Strauss, to a German-language libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal adapted from his drama of 1903—the first of many such collaborations between composer and librettist. It was first performed at the Dresden State Opera on January 25, 1909, and remains a part of the standard operatic repertoire.
Contents |
Roles
| Premiere, January 25, 1909 (Conductor: Ernst von Schuch) |
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| Elektra (Electra), Agamemnon's daughter | soprano | Anny Krull |
| Chrysothemis, her sister | soprano | Margarethe Siems |
| Klytemnästra (Clytemnestra), their mother, Agamemnon's widow | contralto or mezzo-soprano | Ernestine Schumann-Heink |
| Her confidante | soprano | Gertrud Sachse |
| Her trainbearer | soprano | Elisabeth Boehm |
| A young servant | tenor | Fritz Soot |
| An old servant | bass | Franz Nebuschka |
| Orest (Orestes), son of Agamemnon | baritone | Karl Perron |
| Orest's tutor | bass | Julius Puttlitz |
| Aegisth (Aegistheus), Klytemnästra's paramour | tenor | Johannes Sembach |
| An overseer | soprano | Riza Eibenschütz |
| First maid | contralto | Franziska Bender-Schäfer |
| Second maid | mezzo-soprano | Magdalene Seebe |
| Third maid | mezzo-soprano | Irma Tervani |
| Fourth maid | soprano | Anna Zoder |
| Fifth maid | soprano | Minnie Nast |
| Men and women of the household | ||
Synopsis
The plot of Elektra is based upon the great Greek tragedy of the same name by the tragedian Sophocles. The unrelenting gloom and horror that permeate the original play produce, in the hands of Hofmannsthal and Strauss, a drama whose sole theme is revenge. Klytemnästra (Clytemnestra), helped by her paramour Aegisth (Aegistheus), has secured the murder of her husband, Agamemnon, and now is afraid that her guilt will be discovered by her children, Elektra (Electra), Chrysothemis, and their banished brother Orest (Orestes). Elektra, who is the personification of the passionate lust for vengeance, tries to persuade her timid sister to kill Klytemnästra and Aegisth. Before the plan is carried out, Orest, who had been reported as dead, arrives and, upon being told the truth by Elektra, determines upon revenge for his father's death. He kills Klytemnästra and Aegisth; Elektra, in an ecstatic dance of triumph, falls dead in front of her horror-stricken attendants.
Style and instrumentation
Musically, Elektra deploys dissonance, chromaticism and extremely fluid tonality in a way which recalls but moves beyond the same composer's Salome of 1905, and which represents Strauss's furthest advances in modernism, from which he later retreated. The bitonal or extended Elektra chord is a well known dissonance from the opera while harmonic parallelism is also prominent modernist technique[1].
To support the overwhelming emotional content of the opera, Strauss uses a very large and in some ways unusual orchestra, with the following instrumentation:
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Motives and chords
The characters in Elektra are famously characterized in the music through motives or chords including the Elektra chord. Klytamnestra, in contrast to Agamemnon's clearly diatonic minor triad motif, is characterized by a bitonal six note collection most often represented as a pair of two minor chords a tritone apart, typically on B and F, rather than simultaneously[2].
Agamemnon is depicted through a triadic motive: 
Criticism
Despite the much admired "orchestral virtuosity" and "musical structure" Kramer criticizes the portrayal of Elektra, as with Salome, as misogynist, comparing it to the portrayal of women in Otto Weininger's Sex and Character[2].
References
- ^ DeLone et al, eds., Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music p.333, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall ISBN 0-13-049346-5.
- ^ a b Lawrence Kramer, "Fin-de-siècle Fantasies: Elektra, Degeneration and Sexual Science", Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2,July 1993, pp. 141-165.
Sources
