Word: klytaemnestra
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...Hofmannsthal's reading of Sophocles bristles with frank Freudian overtones of a kind the operatic stage had not seen before and would not see again until Berg's Wozzeck. All in all, the audience tended to agree with the fabled Ernestine Schumann-Heink, who sang the first Klytaemnestra but vowed never to do it again. "It was frightful," said she. "We were a set of madwomen. There is nothing beyond Elektra. We have lived to reach the farthest boundary in dramatic writing for the voice with Wagner. But Strauss goes beyond...
...Strauss's one-act shocker still had plenty of power - from the moment the enlarged orches tra came crashing to life, through the frankly erotic music accompanying the incestuous recognition scene between Elektra and Orest, to Elektra's shrieking "Stab her once more!" at the news that Klytaemnestra had been struck down. But the performance also was a reminder that Elektra no longer has the almost physical shock value it possessed in Strauss's time: overlaying the stark story is a thin coat ing of German Gemütlichkeit that too often turns passion to mere posturing...
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