Tonight’s Opera of the Week – A terrifying Elektra from Geneva
OperaSlippedisc, courtesy of OperaVision broadcasts from the Grand Théâtre de Genève where the cogs of revenge are set in motion by director Ulrich Rasche, who imprisons the characters of Elektra in a spectacular scenic device: a steel tower weighing almost twelve tons in perpetual rotation. In the pit, conductor Jonathan Nott and his Orchestre de la Suisse Romande confront the musical challenges of Richard Strauss’ intoxicating one-act score. The female characters at the centre of the drama are sung by three artists of the highest calibre: Ingela Brimberg as Elektra, Sara Jakubiak as Chrysothemis and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner as Clytemnestra.
The Plot: Queen Clytemnestra assassinates King Agamemnon. Their daughter, Elektra, lives for the day when her father’s death will be avenged. Like a curse, the vendetta must be fulfilled, but is Elektra capable of committing the irreparable?
Available from 18 March 2022 at 19.00 CET, 18.00 London, 13.00 NY
Thank you for the (free) opportunity to watch an opera production from another country. It underscored how lucky I have been to have seen productions at home, starring Nilsson and Goerke. Kudos to the Orchestra. A pox on the house of the mechanized distraction at the center.
The singing and the orchestra are top superb. These singers deserve to be better known. The production and costumes and ” the machine” are ghastly. How these people sing and walk forward and backwards non stop while hooked to this awful contraption is beyond me.