Elektra - THE MET: Live in HD

The genius director Patrice Chéreau (From the House of the Dead) didn’t live to see his great Elektra production, previously presented in Aix and Milan, make it to the stage of the Met. But his overpowering vision lives on with soprano Nina Stemme—unmatched today in the heroic female roles of Strauss and Wagner—who portrays Elektra’s primal quest for vengeance for the murder of her father, Agamemnon. Legendary mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier is chilling as Elektra’s fearsome mother, Klytämnestra. Soprano Adrianne Pieczonka and bass-baritone Eric Owens are Elektra’s troubled siblings. Chéreau’s musical collaborator Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Strauss’s mighty take on Greek myth.

Production a gift of Robert L. Turner

The story takes place in Mycenae, Greece, some years after the end of the Trojan War. This mythically resonant era has inspired opera composers for centuries, including Monteverdi (Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria, 1640), Gluck (Iphigénie en Tauride, 1779), Mozart (Idomeneo, 1781), Strauss himself (Die Ägyptische Helena, 1928), and, more recently, Marvin David Levy (Mourning Becomes Electra, 1967). The Met’s production is set in an unspecified contemporary space.

The orchestra for Elektra is often cited as the largest for any repertory opera. It opens and closes the drama with a crashing motive that represents Agamemnon, Elektra’s father, who even in death dominates the lives of his family. The score encompasses an astonishing range of musical color: there are moments of sublime lyricism when the characters express tenderness or love, and there is brutal, harsh dissonance when they are at (or beyond) the bounds of sanity.

Met performances of Elektra have been dominated by a succession of outstanding singing actresses who took on the tour-de-force title role: Rose Pauly (pictured here with Paul Althouse as Aegisth) in 1938, Astrid Varnay in 1952, and, beginning in 1966, Birgit Nilsson, who often starred opposite Leonie Rysanek as Chrysothemis and Regina Resnik as Klytämnestra. In the first few decades, Elektra frequently shared the stage on double bills with such unlikely companions as Gianni Schicchi, Pagliacci, or Menotti’s Amelia Goes to the Ball.

PRODUCTION: Patrice Chéreau
STAGE DIRECTOR: Vincent Huguet
SET DESIGNER: Richard Peduzzi
COSTUME DESIGNER: Caroline de Vivaise
LIGHTING DESIGNER: Dominique Bruguière

Duration 105’