The Downfall
Richard Strauss' 'Elektra' in Bologna,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
Elektra is one of
the most performed operas by Richard Strauss on a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
Over the last few years, M&V, has
carried some twenty reviews. In Italy, the work has been shown in
almost all major opera houses and in some
provincial theatres (Bolzano, Piacenza, Modena
and Catania). In Bologna, it was only previously
performed once, in 1969, and in an Italian translation which made
the audience miss the painstaking work of
the composer and of the poet to have a perfect match between words and music.
Thus, it is good news that finally this 'tragedy in one act' has arrived in
Bologna in an unabridged version, co-produced with the Gran
Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona and the Théâtre de la Monnaie
in Brussels. After seven performances in Bologna,
the production is
scheduled to open the opera season in Reggio Emilia. I saw and
heard the production in Bologna on 15 November 2015.
As the 'tragedy in one act' is very well known, I will deal only with the
specifications of this production. The stage director (Guy
Joosten) and his team (Patrick Kinmonth for sets and costumes, and Manfred Voss for lighting) place the opera not in the
Mycenaean royal palace several centuries BC — ie
during the time of the Trojan war — but in a half-destroyed German baroque building in the nineteen forties. At
first sight, the audience felt that the setting was Eastern Germany in the mid-forties (because
Elektra's maids change in a locker room and wear grey uniforms).
 A scene from Richard Strauss' 'Elektra' in Bologna. Photo © 2015 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the image for higher resolution |
As the plot unfolds, especially when
Aegisth arrives in Nazi attire, it is clear that we are in the final part
of World War II, when the
German downfall is approaching. This is even more explicit in the final scene: while on the lower part of
the stage Elektra is dancing out of happiness for the
deaths of Aegisth and Klytämnestra, on an upper balcony Orest is carrying out a
real carnage of those who served Aegisth and Klytämnestra after Agamenon's
murder. Thus the key dramaturgic theme is not the confrontation between three women (Elektra, Klytämnestra and
Chrysothemis) with serious psychological problems —
after all, we are in Sigmund Freud's time — or the search for pardon, but the
downfall of a society.
 Thomas Hall as Orest and Elena Nebera in the title role of Richard Strauss' 'Elektra' in Bologna. Photo © 2015 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the image for higher resolution |
The musical direction is perfectly in line with this interpretation of the
'tragedy'. Conductor Lothar Zagrosek is a contemporary music specialist
and has recorded for Decca the full operatic series of Entartete Musik (ie music
forbidden during Nazism because it was considered to be degenerate). Thus he is
particularly suited to handle a score in which everything is
extreme — from the dissonances to the experiment with atonalism, from melodic
flows to chromatic passages.
 Elena Nebera in the title role of Richard Strauss' 'Elektra' in Bologna. Photo © 2015 Rocco Casaluci. Click on the image for higher resolution |
The vocal cast is perfectly integrated with
this reading of the score. It is a very cohesive cast because they have already
staged Elektra in Barcelona and Brussels. Natascha Petrinsky is
Klytämnestra, Elena Nebera is Elektra, Anna Gabler: Chrysothemis, Jan Vacik:
Aegisth and Thomas Hall: Orest.
Copyright © 20 November 2015 Giuseppe Pennisi,Rome, Italy
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