Word: elektra
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...which five years ago pledged itself to new or rarely performed works. In a sprawling tent at Ellenville, N.Y., the festival presented the Eastern premiere of Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum, the premiere of a ballet by Villa-Lottos, Sibelius' music for The Tempest and Strauss's Elektra, Carl Orff's score for Midsummer Night's Dream. But the festival was dogged by bad luck and bad weather, last summer had to close up shop in midseason. This summer, operating from a new site, it has come back stronger than ever. Last week, with the first...
INGE BORKH, 36, a big-voiced, big-framed German soprano, sings brilliantly in such muscular roles as Elektra and Salome, overacts with boisterous Germanic abandon. Last week, in her Met debut, she acted a coarse-grained Salome. She danced enthusiastically, handled her voice intelligently and, in the final long soliloquy, sang with exquisite beauty...
Strauss: Scenes from "Salome" and "Elektra" (Inge Borkh, soprano; Chicago Symphony conducted by Fritz Reiner; Victor, 2 LPs). A rising German-born soprano in two of her finest roles. The excerpts include her biggest scenes, including the only warm moments in Elektra -when the demented woman recognizes her brother. The orchestral climax is terrible in its intensity; Borkh is splendid...
...included Randolph-Macon students only, the male roles were all played by women. But after all this simply reversed the ancient practice, which allowed all-male casts only. A few of the big roles could have stood better acting; yet Jeannette Hume had a number of fine moments as Elektra. And it was a good idea for Elizabeth Scarff to portray Cassandra as insane, for this made more credible the continued disbelief of all her auditors. I do wish something had been done about the actresses' accents: Attic Greek just does not mix with a Southern United States drawl...
...Salome in memory. But she gave an overpowering impression of the willful, depraved teenager, from her disheveled entrance to her final kisses on the lips of John the Baptist's severed head. Soprano Goltz (a strikingly versatile singer with a repertory of 116 roles, ranging from Musetta to Elektra) is most famous for her appearances in Richard Strauss's operas in Vienna, and last week she proved why. She sang the fiendishly hard music with complete mastery and with silvery smoothness, even when her voice had to pierce through the orchestra's loudest blasts...