Bloody opera of the day
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Blood is gushing forth in the barrack square. Elektra is biding her time. Enormous steel giants are rising. Elektra curses her mother. A forest is set on fire at Umestan. Elektra demands revenge!
Richard Strauss’s Elektra opens tomorrow in Umeå, Sweden, with Carlus Padrissa as director. Five performances, 14-23 August: http://
Looks intriguingly ambitious.
In the late Roman empire, theatre plays in Rome were enlived with real blood from live amputations of slaves’ limbs and real killing, together with real sexual acts. Although nowadays ‘Regietheater’ at opera stages hesitates to go that far, the taste is the same.