“After this opera, you will need a drink,” said one opera company’s general director while introducing a recent performance of Richard Strauss’ Elektra. No Hungarian officials were on hand to advise a sold-out audience at Budapest’s gorgeously restored Hungarian State Opera how to deal with Strauss’ opera, but it is not hard to understand why. Derived from Sophocles and the Greek myths that informed him, Elektra falls in the vein of sequels to the events of the Trojan War recounted in Homer’s Iliad. Before the action begins, Agamemnon, whose spectral presence shadows the opera, had returned to his kingdom of Argos, where he was treacherously murdered by his wife Klytämnestra and her lover Aegisth.
When the curtain opens—in Strauss’s opera to a somber four-chord leitmotif eulogizing Agamemnon—we see the shattered aftermath. Elektra, Agamemnon’s devoted daughter, has lost her sanity and been cast out of the palace. She laments her father’s death and waits for vengeance to claim his murderers. After failing to enlist her sister Chrysothemis to do the deed, she taunts the guilt-ridden Klytämnestra, telling her mother that only her death will atone for her misdeeds. The unexpected return of her brother Orest, long believed dead, propels revenge to its natural conclusion. Orest kills the murderous couple, sending Elektra into a joyous dance that ends with her fatal collapse.
Emotionally, the work can be either exhausting or cathartic, depending on what remote recesses of one’s psyche it accesses. The plot’s fin-de-siècle reimagination by the Austrian playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who produced an original drama based on the ancient story in 1903, responded to themes of distress and alienation in modern society, as well as the modish trope of female hysteria then coursing through Viennese salons and psychiatric clinics. The play captivated Strauss, who undertook a close collaboration with von Hofmannsthal to produce the opera’s libretto. Their often uneasy creative partnership outlasted Elektra and continued with several other operas until von Hofmannsthal’s death in 1929.
Despite its potential minefield of gender politics, Elektra still speaks to us today, perhaps even more than Strauss’s earlier ‘shock’ opera, Salome, which was widely proscribed after its 1905 premiere (New York’s Metropolitan Opera withdrew it on moral grounds after its 1907 company premiere performance and did not perform it again until the 1930s). In post-modern life, our society undoubtedly still suffers from the same neuroses around sex, gender, and power, and others we devised along the way.
Budapest has a strong roster of productions in the high German Romantic, including a full production of Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, which was completed in 2022 and will be reprised in Fall 2023. The house itself underwent a five-year, $300 million renovation courtesy of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government, and has reemerged as perhaps the most modern of Europe’s traditional opera houses.
This May, the Hungarian State Opera revived not only Elektra, but also Die Frau ohne Schatten, another collaboration between Strauss and Hofmannsthal which was delayed by World War I and premiered late, in 1919. Frosch (‘frog’), as Strauss called it, glimmers with hope. An unnamed Empress who cannot bear children (i.e. cannot cast a shadow) must acquire that ability lest her husband the Emperor turn to stone. Tempted to acquire it from the wife of the poor dyer Barak as suggested by her misanthropic nurse, she is instead moved by mortal passions and renounces her intent, no matter the consequences. Her act of self-sacrifice removes the curse, and both couples rejoice before a chorus of unborn children who praise the joy of life.
Both operas were served by the talents of the superb high dramatic soprano Szilvia Rálik, who is unfortunately not well known in the West but certainly should be. With soaring high notes and beguiling dramatic insight, she sang the Dyer’s Wife and the title role in Elektra on successive evenings, and then returned the morning after Elektra to give another performance in a Sunday matinee of Frau ohne Schatten. These demanding parts resonated with no sign of exhaustion, and she was loudly cheered by enthusiastic, sold-out audiences. Her Frau ohne Schatten appearances came among a stellar cast. The baritone Csaba Szegedi sang a firm and steady Barak. Tenor István Kovácsházi, who sings Wagner’s Heldentenor roles here in Budapest, was a brilliant Emperor, a great fortune since there is a tendency to under cast that role with singers who often cannot equal their colleagues.
Hungary has produced singers who built international careers, and two of them were on hand to fill leading roles here. Eszter Sümegi is a bit worn in voice but added sophistication and power as the Empress. Mezzo-soprano Ildikó Komlósi emerged as the Cold War ended and won Luciano Pavarotti’s international competition early in her career. At home, she was a malevolent but nearly irresistible presence as the Nurse.
Michael Boder led a vivid performance. The Hungarian State Opera orchestra is one of Europe’s finest and deserves recognition in every category for every section.
János Szikora’s production, which premiered in 2014, is a bit bleak, with the characters inhabiting a kind of Stone Age habitation separated into an over world and an underworld. Projections give imagery for the opera’s legendary surroundings. A slight mishap with the curtain delayed Act II, but the problem was quickly remedied and the artists retained their cool.
Bálazs Kovalik’s older production of Elektra, in repertoire since 2007, updated the Greek tragedy to a louche present that looks not unlike Eastern Europe as it emerged from communism. The House of Atreus, where all the misdeeds happen, is a stark modern compound. The opening chatter among the serving women happens in a communal shower. Aegisth, the usurper, chases them around in a bathrobe. Orest enters primed for vengeance with the unsmiling demeanor of a 1990s mafia hitman. He dispatches not only Aegisth and Klytämnestra with an automatic pistol, but also does Elektra the favor of ending her miserable, tortured existence. For good measure, but for no particular reason, he also guns down Chrysothemis, who usually ends the opera distraught but alive.
Rálik in the title role was the real star, almost making one forget that she had been on stage as the Dyer’s Wife just the night before. Soprano Adrienn Miksch sang a full-bodied Chrysothemis. Gergana Rusekova’s Klytämnestra came off rather rough, but the character is tortured by guilt, nightmares, and regrets too great to be otherwise. István Horváth’s pinched tenor served Aegisth well and offered the usual comic relief. Gábor Bretz was a frighteningly stentorian Orest. Balázs Kocsár led a driving performance from the podium.
The company offered a new production of Mozart’s Idomeneo in rotation with the Strauss operas. Elektra (Elettra, in her Italian appellation) shows up in it to rival a love interest of the Cretan prince Idamante. The iteration on the Orestiad fitted well with Elektra.
