Elektra

Elektra

1989 · 109 min · ★ 9.0 · Music, Drama

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.

Directed by Brian Large · Written by Hugo von Hofmannsthal

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Cast

Claudio Abbado Self - Conductor
Éva Marton Elektra
Brigitte Fassbaender Klytemnästra
Cheryl Studer Chrysothemis
James King Aegisth
Franz Grundheber Orest
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper Self - Orchestra
Richard Strauss Self - Composer
Wiener Staatsopernchor Self - Chorus

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Elektra

Ariadne auf Naxos - Metropolitan Opera

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