SuperHeroBooks - Richard Strauss - Elektra / Claudio Abbado, Wiener Staatsoper

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Manufacturer: Kultur
Starring: Eva Marton, Cheryl Studer, Brigitte Fassbaender, James King, Franz Grundheber
Directed By: Brian Large

Average Customer Rating:

Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9781561270477
Format: Classical
ISBN: 1561270474
Label: Kultur
Manufacturer: Kultur
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Kultur
Release Date: 1997-06-30
Running Time: 109
Studio: Kultur

Related Items
Wagner - Tristan und Isolde Puccini - Turandot / Franco Zeffirelli - Marton, Domingo, Mitchell, Plishka, Cuenod - James Levine, MET (1988) Strauss - Salome / Malfitano, Rysanek, Hiestermann, Estes, Sinopoli, Berlin Opera Strauss - Elektra Richard Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier / Te Kanawa, Howells, Haugland, Bonney, Solti, Schlesinger (The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden)

Spotlight customer reviews:

Customer Rating:

Summary: The best ELEKTRA so far!!!
Comment: Great, amazing production.
Kupfer rules with this intense and inspired stage directing.
This is the first Elektra of Eva Marton and it is the best interprentation I have ever seen so far.
Her Elektra is passionate, human, full of pain, insanity, fear and fury. Multimensional portrayal and great conducting from Abbado, as well.
A MUST for every opera fan!!! A MUST SEE!!!

Customer Rating:

Summary: Beautifully sung, but...........
Comment: This production of Elektra is exceptionally well sung by all involved--no weak links.

The Vienna State Opera under Claudio Abbado provides a richer orchestral sound than I have heard in other productions.

I should warn you about the staging, costumes, and subtitles:

The staging and scenery are uworldly--a huge bust (of Agamemnon?), a giant, planet-like sphere, and many ropes hanging from the ceiling. The ropes provide something for the singers to hang onto and struggle against, but some may find this distracting.

The costuming is dark and of no identifiable nationality or time period--and that's OK--it fits in with the intended dark and gloomy prisonlike world of Elektra. But the headgear seems too bizarre to me. Chrisothemis seems to be wearing a conehead hat, and the rest wear hats resembling leather football helmets of the 1920s.

The optional subtitles are in something like King James English, with lots of "thou" and "thee." Perhaps that's intended to help set a long-in-the-past atmosphere.

Although Marton and Studer sing very well, I found Brigitte Fassbaender to be the one who steals the show. Kitschly-bejewelled, she hobbles along, decrepit, deranged, and hideous--EXACTLY what most expect of Elektra's evil mother. Much as a really nasty Scarpia makes the opera, Tosca work, Elektra works best played off a totally repulsive Klytemnestra.

If the mentioned issues about subtitles, hats, and staging would not bother you, the rest of it is a delightful dark operatic work. By the way, Elektra is NOT a pseudo-psycho-sexual story about a girl obsessed with her father. As you mythology folks know, Elektra's obsession is about getting JUSTICE for her father's murder.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Abbado - Yes
Comment: Abbado is the best conductor of this generation in my opinion. The vitality and sensitivity of his performances can't be surpassed. He does Strauss as well as Beethoven and Verdi.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Elektra shows everyone the ropes
Comment: The pacing by the Vienna Staatsoper (Conducted by Claudio Abbado) was well done in one act. It was a tad fast at first. Then you get into the story which follows the classic telling with a little more emphases on Klytemnästra.

Basic tale based on a play by Sophocles is that the mother-queen Klytemnästra (Brigitte Fassbaender) and her mother's lover Aegisth (James King) dispatches the father-king Agamemnon. Turns out he was a favorite of Elektra (Eva Marton) was quit fond of her father and swears revenge. Her sister tries to talk her out of it. But the eventual outcome will rely on all the siblings and Klytemnästra's bad dreams. And Elektra is too ecstatic about the outcome.

I understand a little German so I watched this the first time through with the English Subtitles. I am not sure that is an advantage over just gleaning the few words and knowing the story as the subtitles we so archaic that they were almost unfathomable and distracting. At one point Klytemnästra even says "ye gods".

Get a different view of this story by watching "Electra" (1962) with Irene Papas as Electra. This time rendered in Greek.

Electra Starring: Irene Papas

Customer Rating:

Summary: So Intense!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comment: This production was incredible!! I felt dragging tension throughout the entire DVD. Eva Marton's voice is huge and incredibly affective. She acted so well as Elektra!!! Mezzo-Soprano Brigitte Fassbaender is a genius. Her potrayal of Queen Clytemnestra was amazingly done. I can't imagine anyone else doing a better job. This was an incredibly dark opera...very different from Strauss's other masterpieces, with the exception of Salome. You won't find darkness and intensity like this in Der Rosenkavalier or Capriccio.

More Reviews

Editorial Reviews:

There is a special category of German opera--we might call it the repellent masterpiece--in which some works of Richard Strauss are prominent, and Elektra is perhaps the pinnacle, certainly a unique experience. This production fulfills all the opera's requirements for mastery and repulsion.

Opera frequently deals with dysfunctional families, but the clan of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Elektra, and Orestes stands out even when compared with those of Oedipus or Medea. Deep, burning hatred, a thirst for revenge, a violent distaste for one's nearest and dearest are the driving forces in this work, which is essentially about the imperative of killing Mommy because she has murdered Daddy, who long ago killed Little Sister. Creating a musical masterpiece out of such material was a daunting challenge, and Richard Strauss fulfilled it spectacularly with music that celebrates the powers of darkness. This Vienna State Opera production captures the music's shadowy, muscular essence. --Joe McLellan