Organization

Conductor

Markus Poschner

Stage director

Patrice Chéreau

Set designer

Richard Peduzzi

Costume designer

Caroline de Vivaise

Lighting designer

Dominique Bruguière

Singer

Soprano

Ricarda Merbeth

Electra

Mezzo-soprano

Waltraud Meier

Klytaemnestra

Vida Mikneviciute

Chrysothemis

Tenor

Stephan Rügamer

Aegisth

Baritone

Lauri Vasar

Orest

Bass

David Wakeham

Orest's tutor

Cheryl Studer

The confidante

The overseer

Natalia Skrycka

The trainbearer

Siyabonga Maqungo

A young servant

Olaf Bär

An old servant

Contralto

Bonita Hyman

First maid

Second maid

Katharina Kammerloher

Third maid

Anna Samuil

Fourth maid

Roberta Alexander

Fifth maid

Gilles Bottacchi

State Opera Berlin

Orchestra

Staatskapelle Berlin

Others

Staatsopernchor Berlin

German

Elektra -  (Electra)

Berlin

Germany

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Elektra

Public

English

Approved

Wie ein Rufen aus der Vorzeit, mit betörender Musik und einem Text von archaisch-wilder Kraft, beschwört Richard Strauss’ »Elektra« den Zauber des Schaurig-D...

Elektra Strauss,R

Like a call issuing from a mythical distant past, Richard Strauss’ »Elektra« summons the magic of eerie gloom and archaic brutality. An almost inevitable »tremendous increase to the very end« (Strauss) in musical tension plunges the listener deep into Electra’s world, which is shaped by grief, pain, and thirst for vengeance. Humiliated and tormented by her family, Electra, the daughter of the king of Mycenae, devotes her life to a single obsessive goal: day in and day out, she invokes the memory of her father, who was murdered treacherously by her mother Clytemnestra and Clytemnestra’s lover Aegisthus, and she waits for the return of her brother Orestes, who is supposed to avenge his father’s murder. The deed must be paid back in kind. Vacillating between hatred, hysteria, weakness, hubris, deep sadness, obsession and sarcasm, Electra has lost every connection to the people around her. She is unkempt and has rejected her femininity.

In his monumental one-act opera for dramatic voices and a giant orchestra, inspired by the powerful eloquence of his perfectly matched librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the fin-de-siècle composer created a musical and psychological portrait that is extremely stirring in its expressiveness and overpowering in its tonal force. In Strauss’s own words, it brought him to the utmost limits of »psychological polyphony«

Electra by Strauss, From (2023/2023), Directed by Patrice Chéreau,, Conductor Markus Poschner, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin, Germany

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Ensemble

Program, About & Synopsis

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Venues