Elektra

Mycenae is ruled by a murderous couple: After her father Agamemnon is murdered by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, Electra has only one thought in her mind—revenge! In his sonically powerful one-act opera, Richard Strauss uses delicate polyphony to sketch the psychological portrait of a traumatized woman. Newcomer director Elena Artisi, together with principal conductor Vassilis Christopoulos, brings a sharp eye to this highly dramatic milestone in opera literature.

Electra is obsessed: her entire being revolves around the murder of her father, Agamemnon, whom her own mother, Clytemnestra, had killed together with Aegisthus upon his return from the Trojan War. From this act grows in Electra an all-consuming desire for revenge. When her brother Orestes returns from exile, fate takes its unstoppable course.
The tragic story of Electra’s family ranks among the most gripping tales in Greek mythology. Against the backdrop of the emerging field of psychoanalysis, Hugo von Hofmannsthal created a modern tragedy whose archaic power Richard Strauss transformed into expressive soundscapes of unprecedented intensity. He pushes tonality to its limits and intensifies the “psychic polyphony” he had already established in Salome.
Director Elena Artisi presents the work as a powerful study of traumatized women who cannot escape the spiral of violence and counter-violence and the oppressive silence surrounding it. As events come to a head, however, liberation from the toxic family structure also seems possible.