Lyric Opera 2018-2019 Issue 8 Elektra

O P E R A N O T E S | L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O 30 | February 2 - 22, 2019 I n its tight hour and forty minutes – the length of the average feature film – Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Elektra manages to pack in enough terror, tension, and unexpected beauty to leave an audience weak at the knees. It was the sheer genius and creative synergy of Strauss and Hofmannstahl in this, their first collaboration, that spawned a work whose savage brilliance remains unique in the operatic canon. It almost didn’t happen. Following the success of Salome , with its libretto based on Oscar Wilde's scandalous play, Strauss was drifting toward other tales out of history and the Bible. Hofmannsthal had been pursuing a collaboration with the elusive Strauss for years, during which time he successfully steered him away from taking on the Borgias, Semiramis, Saul and David, and even a comedy. ( at would come later, with Der Rosenkavalier .) Finally, in 1905, Strauss saw Hofmannsthal’s stage version of Sophocles’s Elektra in Berlin, and knew that it should be his next opera. Hofmannsthal had, of course, made the ancient Greek drama newly relevant to a German-speaking world that was now embracing the revolutionary psychological theories of Sigmund Freud. Opera was ready to grow beyond the more broadly drawn protagonists of the nineteenth century and face the challenge of infusing itself with a new level of sexual and psychological insight. Salome had already been a harbinger of this trend, which would soon be taken up by other German and Austrian composers such as Franz Schreker, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Alexander von Zemlinsky. To Hofmannsthal’s visceral emotional poetry, Strauss brought a score that hit with the force of a sledgehammer. Audiences were stunned, and they remain so over a hundred years later. is uncompromising, cathartic work still has detractors among operagoers who would rather hear L’elisir d’amore or La bohème . Strauss pushed musical violence and brutality to its limits in Elektra , so much so that he never again composed another work so steeped in horror. Only in certain passages of Die Frau ohne Schatten would he again make use of such a nightmarish tonal palette. It was as if he had completely wrung out that aspect of himself – and then moved on. As director Rudolf Hartmann put it in Richard Strauss : e Staging of His Operas and Ballets , “ Salome and Elektra – no matter how contrasted they may be – constitute an impressive foundation to Strauss’s dramatic work; they represent a chapter complete in itself, with no sequel.” But what does Elektra require from those who actually perform it – and what does it take out of them? Nina Stemme, this season’s Elektra at Lyric, has sailed through the score and its huge orchestration numerous times with her full-scaled dramatic soprano voice. Yet a performance of Elektra always leaves its mark. “It’s all about how you learn the part,” she says. “You have to be very careful to savor the softer moments, and pace your voice so that it’s still in the best of shape for the key scene which, for me, is the Recognition Scene with Orest. It’s the most emotional one, but the scene with Klytämnestra is the most dramatically challenging one. So if you scream your vocal cords out of your throat, you are in deep trouble. Also, when you are singing Elektra, you are, at every moment, in the here and now. I remember the first time I sang it, and I was thinking, ‘Oh! I can’t believe she has this other big scene coming up!’” Solitude is Stemme’s way of preparing herself for this taxing role. “On the day of the performance, I do tend to go into my own mental corridor, to How ey Handle Elektra By Eric Myers MARTY SOHL/METROPOLITAN OPERA GRAND TETON MUSIC FESTIVAL Nina Stemme in Elektra at the Metropolitan Opera. Donald Runnicles