Opera Vlaanderen's Elektra explores Strauss' dark side

The subject matter is also a lot stronger than the romantic Der Rosenkavalier, exploring the dark psychology of a family caught in a vicious circle of murder and revenge. This is Greek tragedy filtered through the sensibility of Freud’s Vienna, in the person of playwright and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

King Agamemnon has sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis before sailing for the Trojan War. When he returns victorious, his wife Clytemnestra takes revenge by having him killed. As a result, their daughter Electra swears vengeance, but since she is now marginalised in the court she needs an ally.

When her exiled brother Orestes also appears to have been killed, she must try to persuade her remaining sister to help. But Chrysothemis would rather forgive and move on.

Tightly focused on Electra, the opera explores her desperate struggle against forgetting and her hidden desire for power. It can also be read as a tale of youthful rebellion, an uprising against the older generation.

Elektra’s jagged music often inspires productions to adopt an expressionist look, all tilting floors and heavy eye-shadow. But hints dropped about the approach taken by rising German director David Bösch suggest a setting that combines a torture chamber and a child’s bedroom. There will be blood.

Swedish soprano Iréne Theorin takes the title role, with Lithuanian soprano Ausrine Stundyte as Chrysothemis and German alto Renée Morloc as Clytemnestra. The opera will be sung in German with Dutch translation. 

12 September to 3 October at Opera Antwerp & Ghent
www.operaballet.be