Elektra

Operas by Richard Strauss
Guntram (1894) Feuersnot (1901) Salome (1905) Elektra (1909) Der Rosenkavalier (1911) Ariadne auf Naxos (1912/16) Die Frau ohne Schatten (1918) Intermezzo (1924) Die ägyptische Helena (1927) Arabella (1932) Die schweigsame Frau (1934) Friedenstag (1938) Daphne (1938) Die Liebe der Danae (1940) Capriccio (1942)
v • d • e

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.

Roles

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. Klytaemnestra (Clytemnestra), helped by her paramour Aegisth (Aegisthus), 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 Klytaemnestra 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 Klytaemnestra 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: woodwind: piccolo (douling fourth flute, although this is omitted from the instrumentation list at the beginning of the score), 3 flutes (flute 3 doubling piccolo 2), 3 oboes (oboe 3 doubling English horn), heckelphone, clarinet in E-flat, 4 clarinets in B-flat and A, 2 basset horns, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon; brass: 8 horns (horns 5-8 doubling 2 B-flat tenor and 2 F bass Wagner tubas), 6 trumpets, bass trumpet, 2 tenor trombones, bass trombone, contrabass trombone, Tuba; percussion: 6-8 timpani (2 players), snare drum, bass drum (with switch), cymbals, tam-tam, triangle, tambourine, castanets, glockenspiel; keyboards: celesta (ad libitum); strings: 2 harps (doubled if possible at the end), 24 Violins divided into three groups, 18 Violas divided into three groups (the first of which, unusually, doubles as the fourth violin section), 12 Violoncellos divided into two groups, 8 Double basses

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", New Musicology professor Lawrence 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]

Recordings

See Elektra discography.

References

1. ^ DeLone et al., eds., Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music p.333, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall ISBN 0-13-049346-5.
2. ^ ^{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

• Amadeus Almanac