The Orchestra and Chorus of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, conducted by Antonio Pappano, present the masterpiece by Strauss Elektra, an opera in one act with a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, based on the homonymous tragedy by Sophocles.
The opera, performed for the first time in Dresden in 1909, features Electra, whose father Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, was killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Egisto to usurp the throne. Electra appears linked to her father and brother Orestes - who returned to Mycenae on the orders of the god Apollo to also avenge his father's death - by an affection that shows morbid aspects, as well as by the obsessive and almost pathological search for revenge.
The latter aspect which highlights, in Strauss's work, the influence of psychoanalysis and Freudian theories, then very much in vogue.
From a stylistic point of view, the work belongs to the expressionist period, characterized by paroxysmal dissonances and sounds, which tend to prevail over the voices entrusted with a mainly declamatory song.
Among the main performers, we remember: the soprano Ausrine Stundyte (Elettra), the soprano Elisabet Strid (Crisotemide), the mezzo-soprano Petra Lang (Clytemnestra), the tenor Neal Cooper (Egisto), the baritone Kostas Smoriginas (Oreste), the bass Nicolò Donini (Oreste's tutor), the contralto Ariana Lucas (the first handmaid).
Photo credits: courtesy of the New Auditorium Parco della Musica
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