Couple before a performance of Elektra. She: "I don't think I know this one, do I dear?" He: "Remember that splendid Viennese night we went to - it's the same composer, Strauss."
Well, no, it isn't, it's not exactly full of cheerful waltzes and polkas. The accompanying booklet that comes with this explains that at the time of writing Richard Strauss and Hugo Hofmenstahl were heavily influenced by the newly fashionable Freud. I don't know a great deal about psychology etc and if I did I doubt I would be much of a Freudian. Nevertheless, I sort of like the idea of an opera influenced by psychoanalysis or whatever, one which is as much about the characters' inner turmoil etc. More specifically it is based upon Greek Mythology, an don the Jungian/Freudian ridiculous notion of the Electra complex. I was going to stick in a link to the Wikipedia on the Electra complex but it's dreadful. There is the Wiki-caveat of disputed neutrality. It is a misogynist diatribe but I'm so ignorant I don't know whether that because Freud/Jung's original theory was misogynist bunk or whether some pygmy with an agenda has decided to parody it in a way that almost as comical as it is insulting.
So let's move swiftly on to the opera. I am yet to get Richard Strauss. I feel I ought to, because there are some beautiful tunes* surrounded by some fascinating orchestration. In some ways, someone who likes Wagner ought to like Strauss, but, as I say I have not (yet) grasped Strauss in the warm and all embracing embrace that I have with Wagner.
As far as I can tell the performances are of high quality, with Eva Marton being a tour de force in what is obviously a taxing role. Good dramatic singing.
I suppose it's the difference between 'accessibility' and 'non-accessibility'. Wagner is so instantly accessible, whereas Strauss isn't. I feel a bit guilty, like I ought to, but with an opera CD/video/DVD database containing 174 items and growing, I am not sure I really want to spend a great deal of time examining this inside out. I played this a week or so ago, and I am playing it again this evening, Boxing Day, which is sheer lunacy, but I want to move on, rather than getting into my very own Elektra Complex**.
It's a good DVD, in that it's an imaginative staging, and is well-filmed etc. Some excellent personenregie and compelling performances. It's very dark, persistently and unremittingly dark, recorded at Wiener Staatsoper in 1989. I just don't feel enough about these characters to really care, and I am wishing it over, although at less than two hours it's hardly an ordeal. the Royal Opera House is planning to put on a whole load of Strauss later this decade, and I guess this would be the time to spend time really exploring his works.
I feel all wrong writing this, because I'm basically dismissing an acknowledged great work by a great composer. I've done it before in my "Aida's crap" post, not to mention my "Bohème's crap" post. Any half intelligent person will accuse me of great impertinence and arrogance in presuming to have any meaningful thoughts on an opera I barely know, and further impertinence and arrogance in publishing them on the internet, but what the hell, my blog my rules. In time, having reached die Zauberflote, I shall return to A, and introduce previously omitted operas, and revise already blogged ones, and in this way I shall grow in my knowledge and understanding. Maybe this isn't about any specific opera in particular, but about the corpus
So I wrote all that, and suddenly it started drawing me in, more than midway through, at about the time Orestes returns home. but then, I lose interest again. I know, I know, I ought to try. I'm too much of an instant gratification girl, the more effort you put in, the more you get out of it etc etc, but I have to be motivated to put the effort in. I keep hearing reminders of the Ring and I am tempted to have an all night (and all day) vigil of the Ring, confident that its sixteen hours will pass more quickly than the remaining fifteen minutes of this. Still, we've had an extended Mad Scene, and two murders and a death-by-extended-mad-scene.
* the Presentation of the Rose can lull one into thinking Der Rosenkavalier is full of tunes.
** of gagging for L'elisir d'amore but being denied by alphabetical constraints.
