Origin Stories: Strauss’s Elektra

Programme

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Strauss’s operatic tour de force, a powerful insight into the mind of a grieving daughter hell-bent on revenge.

The towering centrepiece of the Philharmonia’s Origin Stories: Greek Myth in Music series, Elektra is an opera of searing emotional intensity. Strauss builds a complex psychological portrait of a family shattered by violence: Elektra herself obsessed with avenging the death of her father Agamemnon; her mother Klytemnestra haunted to the brink of madness by her role in Agamemnon’s murder; her sister Chrysothemis desperate to escape this vortex of horror; and her brother Orestes destined to bring about its bloody conclusion.

The title role is a huge challenge for the soprano, who scarcely leaves the stage for the opera’s 100 minutes. Iréne Theorin takes it on with relish. In previous performances, “Theorin was nothing short of miraculous… a pillar of artistic strength” (Classical Voice America).