Agamemnon ready to cast his long shadow on Western Australia
January 11, 2012 | Author insider
Preparations are well underway for the opening of the Western Australian premiere of Richard Strauss’ blood-fest opera ELEKTRA in under 4 weeks.
Elektra is the most gripping one hundred minutes in opera.
Elektra gives us one of Western civilisation’s greatest stories of fanatical love and revenge. A tour de force that drives performers and orchestra to their limit. It was the first collaboration between Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, one of the most important composer-librettist partnerships in operatic history. It remains a unique work as powerful today as in its first performance in Dresden in 1909.
Director Matthew Lutton’s new production plans to bring startling visual intensity to the music, allowing the audience to enter into the world of Elektra’s dreams and desires. She has seen her father murdered, the city around her is cursed, and she longs for justice. Matthew Lutton, designer Zoe Atkinson and members of the creative team discuss their vision of the work in the video below.
The ELEKTRA cast includes International and Australian stars Eva Johansson, Orla Boylan, Daniel Sumegi, Elizabeth Campbell and Richard Greager. Richard Mills will conduct the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra in his last outing before the RING in Melbourne in November of 2013.
The production is a co-production of the West Australian Opera, ThinIce, Perth International Arts Festival and Opera Australia. A future east coast presentation by Opera Australia is planned.
Performances are at His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth on February 8th, 11th and 14th.
If you don’t live in Perth – beg, borrow or steal a jet ticket. Just don’t miss it !!
On the strength of this video, begging, borrowing or stealing a jet ticket would seem to me to be totally disproportionate to what one will probably witness there. A few sketches and hints of a “surprise ending” never lured anyone to the opera, much less the ramblings of a director, who, it is said, is doing his first opera. Which will be the perfect match for the Strauss novice in the pit… Interesting that the video did not show any of the musical preparation.