Abattoir Blues: "Elektra" in Salzburg

Rene Pape (Orest) during a dress rehearsal of "Elektra" in Salzburg, opening on August 12, to be conducted by Daniele Gatti, directed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff. Stage design by Raimund Bauer.

(Reuters/Ebenbichler)

Comments

[El Cajon]

These types of productions have become a cliche. If there ever was any artistic validty in such stagings, it's been run into the ground by the artistic Freddy Kruegers directing opera in European theatres.

Ancient Roman society degenerated into depictions of and participation in senseless decadance and violence and look where that got them.

[Andrew Powell]

Opening August *8*.

[Frank]

I fully agree with you El Cajon.

[Carina.]

Sick, so sick and oh, very very cheap in order the administration to save money.
Why do singers like Pape enter this utterly vulgar underworld contributing to the darkness of the minds of certain (art) people?
Ancient Greek Drama showed no scenes of murder or brutal violence on stage because
what the Greeks were after was how to make people's lives better through ethos and beauty. Where's the beauty and ethos in the photo above?

[Frits]

Fully agree with El Cajón. And remarkably enough, theatregoers who boo such productions are declared ignorant by critics.

[giugno]

The premiere is sunday August 8!!!

[salz]

I was at the dress rehearsal, that is actually Waltraud hanging upside down there!

[Jim McDaniels]

I don't agree with El Cajon... It's Elektra. An entire opera about death, revenge and killing. That is what I'm looking at in this picture.

[Deb]

my only problem is that the set looks familiar...

http://www.mxat.ru/performance/man-pillow/

[El Cajon]

@Jim McDaniels, the pathological characters in Strauss' opera are Eletra and Klytemnestra, not Orestes. Turning Orestes into a psychotic who hangs or allows his mother's corpse to be hung like a side of beef undermines the piece's dramatic tensions. As bleak as the piece is, the bloodletting is cathartic and restores some sense of equilibrium to a dysfunctional household.

This scene suggests Orestes is a blue collar butcher with no sense of guilt, etc. and I don't think this is what Hofmannsthal had in mind when he wrote the libretto.

It's just more infantile reductionism.

[Jim McDaniels]

@El Cajon, What opera are you writing about? Surely not Richard Strauss' Elektra!

The whole point of of Orestes coming back home IS to kill his mother and step father. In no place in the libretto does Orestes admit to any sense of guilt about the retribution he is about to inflict on his parents.

Maybe hacking your mother to death in cold blood is considered normal in your neck of the woods, but in mine, "psychotic butchery" would be a fine turn of phrase to describe Orestes'actions.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

And Hofmannsthal's text drips with the imagery of the slaughterhouse - Und, schlachte, schlachte, schlachte, Opfer um Opfer - including human sacrifices. Kupfer's brilliant Vienna production was also set in an abbatoir.

[MJA]

For goodness sake! The production only premiered a couple of hours ago and some peoople are making up their minds based on one still photo. Have any of those who have posted mind-made-up comments here actually seen it? Or even read a review? I would be VERY surprised if Nikolaus Lehnhoff's work was not at least interesting - remember the Glyndebourne "Tristan", anyone?

[walter]

Waltraud looks great there!
Who better than she...?

[Nourrit's Number]

Look! Now I have seen everything: A Greek Piñata!

[zipangu]

just discovered this pic - it's not the idea of a slaughterhouse that passed my mind but the closed bathroom where Agamemnon was butchered. I think that respinds very well to the libretto full of cruelty or blood. Orestes' sense of guilt appears nowhere in the libretto - that sense of guilt will appear beyond the opera.
This image is a logical conclusion to Electra depicting her mother's murder.