This afternoon we heard Richard Strauss'es Elektra at Seattle Opera.
http://www.seattleopera.org/tickets/2008-2009/elektra/sights_sounds02.aspxBelieve it or not, this is the first time I have ever heard live opera. My daughter and son get discount tickets through a program for teenagers, and on Sundays they can buy an extra ticket for a guest. So, this is the only time it is affordable for us. Otherwise, they would be $107/each.
We were VERY close to the orchestra pit. That's actually probably good for a Richard Strauss opera. For about an hour or so after the performance, I had the music still going through my head. 90 minutes of heart-pumping energetic music.
The theme of the opera is fairly lurid (if you think about it too closely...). In my old age I seem to be more easily emotionally drawn into fiction. I got more "into" the emotional drama, even though the violence was not realistic, than I would have when younger, when it would have seemed more abstract and less real to me.
Women totally dominate this opera; the male characters are minor; Orestes is needed just to do the dirtywork, which Elektra was willing to have a go at. Elektra dominates the singing and it is challenging for the soprano playing her to sing so long and so loud (the orchestra is intentionally loud).
Both Elektra and Klytamnestra are clearly psychotic. Elektra still has a bit of humanity left...the recognition scene with her brother, and a few tender moments with her sister. Klytamnestra has sunk lower, being portrayed as a sick, wretched, cruel hag, having nothing left but terror. She has animals and maidens sacrificed to try to relieve her terror, but Elektra informs her that the only death that will relieve her is her own.
Where Klytamnestra only feels fear, Elektra feels only loneliness. She is alienated from everyone. She misses her dead father and exiled brother, can't relate to her sister, and loathes her mother and her mother's husband.
Chrysothemis was the only one I could relate to: she's the sensible one. She craves freedom. She wants to escape, to live out her life...even if it meant marrying a slave she wants to "live before she dies", hold her own babies in her arms.... I often think like that...that I'd rather be poor and live in peace and some measure of freedom, than to live in a more comfortable hell.
