‘Hooligans’ at Vienna Elektra, boos for Berlin Parsifal
mainThe weekend’s big openings were greeted with all the maturity we have come to expect from elements in the opera audience of Vienna and Berlin, divided as they are between traditionalists and progressives.
There were cries of ‘hooligan’ at the Vienna State Opera’s new production of Elektra, director Uwe Eric Laufenberg.
It opened with a group of young women naked in the shower, spattered with blood, and their maids behaving like concentration camp guards (original, huh?)
Berlin’s Parsifal, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, was likewise over-endowed with sexual imagery and hints of incest.
Not to mention men with beards.
press photos from Vienna and Berlin state operas
Especially the beards are quite shocking.
Snobbish, Norman. And not everyone is “traditional” v “progressive”. Audiences have every right to boo at a ridiculous production. I certainly would at that appalling description you gave of the Elektra.
The photo looks like the wedding scene from Fiddler on the Roof.
Not having seen the “Electra”, I’m not really in a position to judge but remembering how the strings slither thickly when Aegisthus is murdered and how the whole opera is violent and bloodthirsty and sexual in the extreme the Vienna production would seem to be perfectly apt.
Right. But you do know they don’t REALLY murder him, do you?
It would be more realistic if the victims abstained from resurrecting at curtain call.
You just wait, Enry Iggins – that’s what happens in the next Bieito production. Or was it Cherniakov? or Warlikowski?
La Cieca will be thrilled. So will my personal favorite, the author of this blog:
http://opera-cake.blogspot.fr/2014/10/dvd-tcherniakov-warlikovski.html