Strauss: Elektra – review

Chéreau directed Richard Strauss’s one-act opera at the Aix-en-Provence festival in July 2013. His health was fragile: he died of cancer three months later. As documented on this film, his swansong had the same austere focus as his other late work, always focused on personalities, their family relationships and psychological/emotional motivations, rather than the banalities of spectacle or interpretative provocation: these characters could belong to today as much as to classical mythology.

So this is a remarkably absorbing Elektra, energised not just by Evelyn Herlitzius’ gritty anti-heroine and Waltraud Meier’s unclichéd Clytemnestra, but by Chéreau’s decision to show the two revenge-murders onstage. The DVD includes a charming and revealing 23-minute interview with the director, an unpretentious man with theatre in his blood.

Strauss

Elektra

Patrice Chéreau/Esa-Pekka Salonen

(BelAir Classiques)