Electra by Strauss, From (2016/2016), Directed by Patrice Chéreau, Vincent Huguet, Conductor Daniel Barenboim, Schiller Theater, Berlin, Germany

Like a call from mythical antiquity, Richard Strauss' »Elektra« conjures up the magic of the eerily gloomy, the archaically cruel. An almost inevitable »enormous musical escalation to the end« (Strauss) allows the listener to delve deep into Elektra’s world, which is shaped by grief, pain and thirst for revenge: Elektra, the Mycenaean king’s daughter humiliated and tormented by her family, obsessively pursues only one goal in life: she conjures up Day after day, the memory of her father, who was once murdered by her mother Clytemnestra together with her lover Aegisth, awaits the return of her brother Orestes, who is to take revenge for the bloody deed. Like must be repaid with like. Varying between hate, hysteria, weakness, arrogance, abysmal sadness, Inspired by the linguistic power of his congenial librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the fin-de-siècle composer created a monumental one-act opera for dramatic voices and a huge orchestra, a musical-psychological portrait of extremely stirring expressiveness and overwhelming sound power that, according to his own statement, inspired him to the extreme limits of "psychic polyphony".