Elektra, Op. 58, TrV 223

Composer: Strauss, Richard

Librettist/Text Author: Hofmannsthal, Hugo von

Conductor: Bohm, Karl

Orchestra: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Chorus: Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus

A Young Servant: Doig, Christopher

Aegisthus: Beirer, Hans

Agamemnon: Boysen, Rolf

Chrysothemis: Ligendza, Catarina

Clytemnestra: Varnay, Astrid

Electra: Rysanek, Leonie

Maidservants: Borris, Kaja

Maidservants: Gall, Axelle

Maidservants: Nikolova, Milkana

Maidservants: Vance, Marjorie

Maidservants: Yachmi, Rohangiz

Old Servant: Bohme, Kurt

Orestes: Fischer-Dieskau, Dietrich

The Confidante: Reppel, Carmen

The Overseer: Lorand, Colette

The Trainbearer: Warla, Olga

Tutor of Orestes: Greindl, Josef

Set Designer: Svoboda, Josef

Costume Designer: Halmen, Pet

Stage Director: Friedrich, Gotz

Television Director: Friedrich, Gotz

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Playing Time: 01:58:48

Catalogue Number: A05001698

Synopsis

Elektra, Op. 58, TrV 223 (NTSC)

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Ever since his filming of Salome with stage director Gotz Friedrich in 1974, it had been one of Karl Bohm's greatest wishes to realize an Elektra film with the same director. The production was completed in 1981. That spring, Bohm conducted the soundtrack for the film in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic - it was the great musician's last recording. His death on 14 August 1981 in Salzburg, while work was still in progress on this film, makes Elektra his artistic legacy. No other opera by Richard Strauss calls for such gigantic vocal and instrumental forces as Elektra. The work surges with savage polyphonic sonorities typical of expressionism. Elektra was the first work written in collaboration with the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal and was premiered in the Semper Opera in Dresden on 25 January 1909. In this production, history, psychoanalysis and modern-day apocalyptic visions are presented with compelling urgency through Friedrich's staging and Bohm's artistic mastery. Elektra becomes a contemporary myth of desperate, unrelenting humanity. "Seldom before, surely, have the often erotic ideas of Hofmannsthal's libretto been so explicitly delineated or its tragic grandeur so movingly realised. Leonie Rysanek, in her first and possibly only Elektra, surmounted the score's superhuman demands with an interpretive achievement that crowns her career of more than 30 years. As a whole, the film showed that opera on television can be a great experience." (Daily Telegraph, 4 May 1985)

"Besides being an important historical document of some great opera
talents, Gotz Friedrich's film adaptation of Richard Strauss' Elektra is unusually good television. This Freudian interpretation of the ancient Greek saga is steeped in guilt, murder, incest and revenge?EUR?" (USA Today, 4 November 1986)

"This is a powerfully moving Elektra, many of its distinctive images as memorably vivid as they are harsh. The performances, on the recording and on the set, are really quite extraordinary. Miss Rysanek, in particular, is impressive in what must have been trying circumstances." (The New York Times, 11 April 1986)