Elektra

Jan 1, 1989

1h 49m

★ 0.0

Overview

Recorded at the Vienna State Opera house in 1989, this staging of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Elektra is one of the glories of live opera on film, deserving of eternal availability. The DVD picture has great clarity, despite the darkness of Hans Schavernoch’s set design. Other than the cliché of a huge statue head, toppled on its side, the set manages to be suitably representative of a decaying palace as well as an imposing, theatrical space, dominated by the mammoth body of the statue from which the head apparently dropped, draped with the ropes that seem to have enabled the decapitation. Sooner or later most of the characters cling to and twist around those ropes, an apt stage metaphor for the remorseless repercussions from the murder of Agammenon by his unfaithful wife Klytämnestra and her paramour, Aegisthus. Reinhard Heinrich’s costumes capture a distant era while sustaining a creepily modern look — part Goth, part homeless, part Spa-wear.

Genres

Music

Drama

Production Companies

Arthaus Musik

RM Associates

Wiener Staatsoper

Elektra Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Self - Conductor

Claudio Abbado

Elektra

Éva Marton

Klytemnästra

Brigitte Fassbaender

Chrysothemis

Cheryl Studer

Aegisth

James King

Orest

Franz Grundheber

Self - Orchestra

Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper

Self - Composer

Richard Strauss

Self - Chorus

Wiener Staatsopernchor

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