Strauss: Elektra - Borkh, Schech, Madeira [Bohm] [2 CD]

×

Strauss: Elektra - Borkh, Schech, Madeira [Bohm] [2 CD]

Close

Elektra is a one-act opera by Richard Strauss, to a German-language libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal adapted from his drama of 1903—the first of many such collaborations between composer and librettist. It was first performed at the Dresden State Opera on January 25, 1909.

The plot of Elektra is based upon the great Greek tragedy of the same name by the tragedian Sophocles. The unrelenting gloom and horror that permeate the original play produce, in the hands of Hofmannsthal and Strauss, a drama whose sole theme is revenge. Klytaemnestra (Clytemnestra), helped by her paramour Aegisth (Aegisthus), has secured the murder of her husband, Agamemnon, and now is afraid that her crime will be avenged by her children, Elektra (Electra), Chrysothemis, and their banished brother Orest (Orestes). Elektra, who is the personification of the passionate lust for vengeance, tries to persuade her timid sister to kill Klytaemnestra and Aegisth. Before the plan is carried out, Orest, who had been reported as dead, arrives, determined upon revenge for his father's death. He kills Klytaemnestra and Aegisth; Elektra, in an ecstatic dance of triumph, falls dead in front of her horror-stricken attendants. –-Wikipedia