Like a call from mythical prehistory, Richard Strauss' "Elektra" conjures up the magic of the eerie, dark, archaic and cruel. An almost indispensable “tremendous musical climax right up to the end” (Strauss) immerses the listener deeply in Elektra’s world, which is characterized by grief, pain and thirst for revenge: the Mycenaean king’s daughter Elektra, humiliated and tormented by her family, obsessively pursues only one goal in life: she conjures Day after day, the memory of her father, who was once treacherously murdered by her mother Clytemnestra along with her lover Aegisthus, comes back to her mind and she waits for the return of her brother Orestes, who is supposed to take revenge for the bloody deed. Like must be rewarded with like. Wavering between hatred, hysteria, weakness, arrogance, profound sadness, obsession and sarcasm, Elektra has lost all connection to the people around her, is neglected and has denied her femininity.
Inspired by the linguistic power of his congenial librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the fin-de-siècle composer created a musical-psychological portrait of extremely stirring expressivity and overwhelming sound power with his monumental one-act opera for dramatic voices and giant orchestra, which, according to his own statement, took him to the extreme limits of “psychic polyphony”.
