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Strauss, Elektra: (Concert Performance) Susan Bullock (Elektra),  Orchestra of Opera North, Conductor: Richard Farnes,  The Sage Concert Hall, Gateshead/Newcastle Upon Tyne, 25.1.2009 (JL)

Cast

This performance of Elektra, headed by one of the world’s leading dramatic sopranos,  was a special occasion in that it was one hundred years to the day since the first performance. After the premier in Dresden the show came to England proceeded by a publicity poster that claimed the opera would “Elektrify London” and that the singers were going to have to cope with “the most arduous score ever written”. It is true that it was radical stuff and audiences would have heard orchestral textures and musical harmonies never heard before. But it was not just the music that was radical. Nowadays we would call Elektra a psycho drama. The libretto of this Greek tale about Elektra’s obsession with avenging the bloody murder of her Father Agamemnon by her Mother and lover  with an axe was loosely based on Sophocles’ play by the  super-intellectual poet Hugo Von Hofmannsthal. The librettist had been absorbing  the recently published works of  Sigmund Freud and it shows. It’s all there: hysteria, obsessive behaviour, fear of dreams, love/hate, sexual repression, Elektra’s father fixation and her orgasmically joyful reaction to the murder of her Mother by her Brother - and so on. This is a work which takes place just as much inside the fevered brains of the leading protagonists as in the real world. In one hour forty minutes flat Strauss concentrates it  all in the music with a score of unparalleled intensity and violence.  The characters, the emotions, the neuroses and the action are served by a large number of melodic motives that are woven into the texture of the music, aided by one of the largest orchestras of any work in the repertoire.

An operatic concert performance has obvious disadvantages but in it’s favour is the chance it gives the audience to focus on the music without visual distraction. The Sage Concert Hall is of medium size and with such a large orchestra there was very little room in front for the singers to manoeuvre and although the main characters were able to do a minimal amount of acting  and expressive body language, without costumes it would be pushing it to call this semi-staged. With such a large orchestra there can, of course, be balance problems. Strauss has left us some remarks on the issue but since there were elements of tongue in cheek (as so often with Strauss), it is difficult to know exactly where he stood. He once said that Elektra should be conducted like fairy music but on the other hand at a rehearsal that he was conducting he shouted at the orchestra “louder, I can still hear the singers”. At the Sage, because the singers were so forward and standing in front of the orchestra, they were always going to be well heard, especially with crack singers who had the requisite power as part of their vocal armoury.

Susan Bullock has already sung Elektra with several different companies throughout the world including La Scala and most recently in a highly acclaimed performance at London’s Royal Opera House. This was a consummate performance of great range, intensity, expressive power and stamina. Strauss is uncompromising with his scoring for when it comes to Elektra’s several high note climaxes he unleashes  full orchestra to accompany the top notes. Susan Bullock  had no trouble riding the orchestra. Alwyn Mellor  as her sister, Chrysothemis, almost had power to match. This was unusual in my experience where Chrysothemis is normally pitched against a considerably more powerful soprano in the main role.  Rebecca de Pont Davies as Klytemestra , having come on to the most  orchestrally blockbusting entrance in all opera, well vocally expressed her character’s neurotic menace.The five maids and Overseer roles were all sung by experienced, accomplished singers and when eventually Orestes enters the drama, American Robert Bork provided a distingushed baritone voice that was a relief after an hour of upper register female singing.

Richard  Farnes, Opera North’s conductor, had an absolutely sure control over pace and provided, by all accounts, a more consistently driven performance than that of Mark Elder in the recent Royal Opera House production. With this vast orchestra coming straight at you from the stage there was a series of shattering experiences akin to the feeling of being pressed into the back of one’s seat by hurricane blasts. The reputation of this orchestra continues to grow and these perfomances of Elecktra will only aid that process. I do have one slight quibble to make which is that the orchestra could have done with a few more string players. This is because all the strings were flat on the stage but most of the wind and percussion were raised a level above them. Since the complement of strings was the same as for a normal symphonic peformance there  were insufficient numbers to offset the battery of wind resources.

At the end of the performance, as I recovered from the feeling of having been through a mangle,  I realised that the experience of  being forced to concentrate so much on the music had led me to regard the score as an even greater masterpiece than I had previously thought. The late conductor Norman Del Mar wrote a fine book on the music of Strauss in which he described the two single act operas of  Salome and Elektra as “stage tone poems” and a concert performance really brought home the rationale behind that description.

John Leeman

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