SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

MusicWeb International's Worldwide Concert and Opera Reviews

 Clicking Google advertisements helps keep MusicWeb subscription-free.

Other Links

Editorial Board

  • Editor - Bill Kenny
    Assistant Webmaster - Stan Metzger

  • Founder - Len Mullenger

Google Site Search

 



Internet MusicWeb


 

SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL OPERA  REVIEW

Strauss, Elektra:  (Concert Performance) Munich Philharmonic,Christian Thielemann, Philharmonic Hall Gasteig, Munich 7.2.2010 (JFL)

Cast:

Klytemnestra
Jane Henschel
Elektra Linda Watson
Chrysothemis Manuela Uhl
Aegisth René Kollo
Orest Albert Dohmen


Elektra cannot forget. That’s not her virtue, that’s her—ultimately fatal—flaw. She is not a heroine for bearing the grudge against her mother and stepfather that eats away at her in Richard Strauss’ opera, she is pitied for it. Similarly, her brother Orest’s assumption of power is not redemption-through-restoration, it is resumption of the same regimen of kill-and-be-killed that ruled at any given point before. There are directors who underline this with Orest giving the ‘Roman’ salute upon his enthronement. Not exactly subtle, but perfectly appropriate.

Elektra might have gotten the opera named after her, but that doesn’t mean we are meant to feel with her. Strauss was pragmatic: whereas Wagner had the indistinguishable urge to heap his operatic heroes up in a pile of corpses by the final act, Strauss appreciated the considerable advantages of surviving. “Eh’ ich sterbe will ich auch leben!” (Before I die, I want to live) says Elektra’s sane and practical sister Chrysothemis. Strauss is on her side. She survives.

The opera does not so much condemn mother Clytemnestra and her moral failings, or even her murder, as much as it does her children’s inability to let go and live. Elektra, in short, is a peculiar bitch.

Linda Watson has a particular gift for bringing out that side of Elektra. In that sense Watson, who had never sung this rôle before filling in for Katarina Dalayman in this run of performances (first staged in Baden-Baden, then performed in concert in Munich) with the Munich Philharmonic and Christian Thielemann, was perfectly cast. Her performance was impressive in that emotionally uninvolving, distant way that is her involuntary trademark.

 

Albert Dohmen’s Orest was articulated with taut flexibility and extraordinarily melodic low notes. Jane Henschel’s Klytemnestra exuded a lifetime of stage-wisdom, and Chrysothemis (Manuela Uhl) managed admirably, looking even better than she sounded. How René Kollo performed as Aegisth no one really cared about, because from the moment of Elektra’s recognition of Orest at the very latest, all that mattered was the orchestra and what Thieleman coaxed out of it. (When Aegisth cries out “does no one hear me”, no one actually heard Kollo, because the orchestra had so fallen in love with the music that struggling tenors were of no concern to them.)

 

This is goose-bumps music, anyway: Strauss's way of saying “I don’t care if you can play it, or sing it. This is it, I am Richard Strauss. Deal.” But Thielemann conducted the score (observing the traditional cuts) just like that, too, making for the most shattering, devastating, frenetic climaxes full of relentless, rapturously violent music—and yet played with such loving abandon that it sounded like there was more Rosenkavalier in Elektra, like ever before. Thielemann, who owns the secret to the invisible fast-forward button (no longueurs with him), celebrates the many big moments in this opera with such unbridled grandeur, that the experience became nothing short of entrancing. Hearing an incredible wealth of details and colors thanks to the orchestra being on stage—not muffled by a pit—further added to that experience, even if the singers might have been less than happy about it.

 

Jens F. Laurson

 

Back to Top                                                   Cumulative Index Page