Richard Strauss: Elektra

Year: 2010
Genre: Classical Music, Music, Opera, Performing Arts
Music: Richard Strauss
Libretto: Hugo von Hofmannsthal Wiener Philharmoniker
Conductor: Daniele Gatti
Stage Director: Nikolaus Lehnhoff
Video Director: Thomas Grimm
Crew and Cast: Elektra (Iréne Theorin), Klytämnestra (Waltraud Meier), Chrysothemis (Eva-Maria Westbroek), Aegisth (Robert Gambill), Orest (René Pape)

Description:

With Richard Strauss Elektra, the Salzburg Festival delivers a thoroughly impressive new production that the Vienna daily Kurier calls the best new opera production of 2010. Reaping acclaim are the top-quality vocalists as well as the mighty stage set and the sensitive direction of Nikolaus Lehnhoff. Portraying Elektra is Swedish soprano Iréne Theorin, who injects astonishing dramatic power into her role. Impressive in every respect, wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about her role debut here. Internationally acclaimed Wagner singer Waltraud Meier also gives her spectacular, commanding stage debut here as Klytämnestra. They are complemented by an outstanding Eva-Maria Westbroek as Chrysothemis, and a forceful René Pape as Orest. Nikolaus Lehnhoffs many years of experience on the worlds greatest stages are clearly visible in his direction of the singers: moving about a sinister, forbidding set bathed in suggestively changing lighting, the vocalists are treated as stage actors, whose expressive gestures are captured with particular vividness and immediacy by the camera. Leading the Wiener Philharmoniker is Daniele Gatti. Alternating between late 19th-century lyricism and early 20th century excess, he clearly emphasizes the dual conflicts at the heart of the work. [Amazon UK]

Recorded live at the Großes Festspielhaus, Salzburg Festival, 2010.

Production: Germany | Arthaus Musik