Elektra

Synopsis

Recorded at the Vienna State Opera house in 1989, this staging of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Elektra is one of the glories of live opera on film, deserving of eternal availability. The DVD picture has great clarity, despite the darkness of Hans Schavernoch’s set design. Other than the cliché of a huge statue head, toppled on its side, the set manages to be suitably representative of a decaying palace as well as an imposing, theatrical space, dominated by the mammoth body of the statue from which the head apparently dropped, draped with the ropes that seem to have enabled the decapitation. Sooner or later most of the characters cling to and twist around those ropes, an apt stage metaphor for the remorseless repercussions from the murder of Agammenon by his unfaithful wife Klytämnestra and her paramour, Aegisthus. Reinhard Heinrich’s costumes capture a distant era while sustaining a creepily modern look — part Goth, part homeless, part Spa-wear.

Main Cast

Claudio Abbado

Self - Conductor

Age : 80 | Popularity : 3%

Éva Marton

Elektra

Age : 80 | Popularity : 3%

Brigitte Fassbaender

Klytemnästra

Age : 84 | Popularity : 3%

Cheryl Studer

Chrysothemis

Age : 68 | Popularity : 3%

James King

Aegisth

Age : 80 | Popularity : 3%

Franz Grundheber

Orest

Age : 86 | Popularity : 3%

Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper

Self - Orchestra

Age : N/A | Popularity : 0%

Crew

Department	Role	Name
Directing	Director	Brian Large Harry Kupfer
Sound	Original Music Composer	Richard Strauss
Writing	Writer	Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Department	Role	Name

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