House of Atreus: Fall Collection
Elektra occupies a special place in the Met’s rep, in a cheap way. It’s no easier to cast than any number of things that inspire well-rehearsed refrains of “put it away for fifty years,”* and really over the last quarter century many a somber compromise has been made in casting. What sets it apart is that folks seem willing enough to lie back and think of Mycenae while Gabriele Schnaut humps the leg of Strauss’ towering score, content to soak in the piece under any conditions.
Much is forgiven when one role is sung particularly well. Deborah Voigt’s Chrysothemis, for a time, was unofficially the above-the-marquee draw, and if you ask me, it was maybe her finest role and an absolutely sufficient reason to go. Me, I don’t remember much at all about how Hannah Schwarz sounded that run through except that I was pretty sure I wouldn’t remember it in fifteen years. Sometimes you know.
Maybe it’s that the orchestra does so much of the work of characterization and the Met’s orchestra is ridiculously fluent in this particular idiom. But it’s more gratifying to think we Straussians who love his brief tragedy best, we the Elektoral college, if you will**, are just that hardcore that we leave the endless kvetching and melodramatic wilting to the bel cantist hothouse flowers.
Yeah I’m just trying to start a turf war there. I like Beatrice di Tenda as much as the next guy at the sports bar.
Elektra has also escaped another sort of pearl-clutching, on account of having existed at the Met since 1992 in an uncontroversially mopey production by Otto Schenk. (The angry slash of red on the curtain is, sorry to say, false advertising.) Not that Elektra, already considered rough going I guess, has been a lightning rod for radical reënvisionings as Southern Gothic or punk rock.
Thursday’s prima (at one point this week I found myself asking someone “is the first night of Hannukah the same as the Elektra prima?”*** which, I know there are supposed to be no original utterances but now I wonder) represents no big splashes, nothing to rock the boat. There’s no new production and in the marquee roles we have a mezzo well-established and well-loved in the house doing a role she’s sung the fuck out of elsewhere (at Tanglewood she pulled off the feat of unstaged dementia), an established if not exactly on-the-sides-of-buses soprano in a role she sang very solidly indeed in the much smaller house in Toronto, and… Voigt.
Some academic whose name I’m not going to google wrote a piece about how Ben Heppner’s incessant cracking has affected our perception of his roles. (Right, in academia this is not called highly subjective bitching—it’s called a tenure dossier.) Surely much the same could be bloviated about where Ms. Voigt is concerned. The obvious topics of weight and black dresses consigned to Blogatory, there’s no reason to deny that the last five years have been vocally eventful ones that have raised many questions about the next fifteen. As someone wiser than me said, at the mention of one of her off nights, “she’s done too many years of good service to kick her to the curb, but opera companies may not know quite what to do with her.”
What I find confounding and at the same time reassuring is that what roles are going to work out in her voice and what roles aren’t isn’t easily divined. Gioconda, though not fully idiomatic, found her sounding healthy and on top of things, while Tosca has been a struggle, to say the least. The Siegfried Brunnhilde, on the evidence of the 125 gala, is a bit of a minefield; meanwhile, her Chrysothemis is as good as anything she’s ever sung.
Including her Chrysothemis. Yes, the sound is radically different from how she sang it in the 90’s. The plushness that used to go all the way up and all the way down is now largely gone, replaced by something harder and at times more strident, but whereas this stridency wrecked her gala Rosenkavalier trio, it is well-absorbed into Chrysothemis’ music, if anything adding urgency and making the girl a little less of a drag.
Effectively, Voigt now sings more like a dramatic soprano, which lent some air of Opposite Day to her pairing with Susan Bullock. Ms. Bullock, though equal to the role of Elektra, sings it with a certain lyric quality that gives to and takes from the role about what you’d expect: singing against orchestral fury gets lost at times, while a good deal of the recognition scene is sung with more tenderness than many have to lavish on it. There’s a vulnerability inherent to the sound that makes this unlike a Deborah Polaski Elektra (with her hypnotic fury verging on possession) and indeed more like a Hildegard Behrens Elektra, appropriately—fitting, as the production is dedicated to that artist.
And, like Behrens, there is some curdle to the voice that helps cut through the orchestra at times, but for listeners mostly looking for brute force in their Elektra, probably not enough. The scale of Ms. Bullock’s voice allowed, also, for a welcome degree of inflection (”Ich, Mutter? Ich?” rarely enough sounds incredulous or interrogatory, and I don’t think I’ve heard anyone slather as much venom on the words “Tochter meiner Mutter.”) The physical performance was a bit much for some, not least the nod to Elaine Benes in the Beilentanz, but I give the woman credit for aiming too high rather than too low.
Felicity Palmer, now safe to call a house favorite, was also, in her way, slightly, fruitfully miscast. In certain of Klytämnestra’s utterances (”sie redet wie an Aaaaaarzt!”) we expect an element of true grotesque available only to the contralto. Dame Palmer is not a contralto, and though she indulged in some appropriate barking on a few such lines, it was the role’s few mezzo-range money notes that she killed with. This made for a more patrician Klytämnestra than many (including some I adore) who find the Ethel Merman in the role and run with it. I’m never certain of her age, but she’s in fine form and, oh ok this just in from the internet, she’s 65.
As Miss Golightly was saying when she so rudely interrupted herself, the voice is in fine shape and the lady has no compunction about, say, lying on a big chunk of Schenkian detritus on an awkward incline, and so forth. It’s a game portrayal, even if not as forceful and menacing as some.
Fine support came from such as Evgeny Nikitin, a bass with the requisite Orest voice the color of regret, and a good loud set of maids with Wendy Bryn Harmer, compelling in the plummy role of IV (The Phantom Menace.) And the set looked really clean, so you could tell they were totally competent maids. Wolfgang Schmidt as Aegisth made some noises I’m pretty sure weren’t character-driven.
Fabio Luisi found much of the grandeur but little of the drive or brutality in the score, save perhaps for the last moments. And either he has a low strings fetish or I should try an odd numbered Balcony Box next time.
*to the tune of “Mademoiselle from Armentieres.
**but there’s really no reason to.
***no.
Well I’m glad somebody enjoyed it.
I saw one of Madeira’s Klytemnestras in Feb 1971. not sure if it was that final matinee or the one a week or two earlier.
But she was very fine, like a couple other posters, I like a true low voice in this role (and Madeira was a real contralto). I’ve seen an awful lot of sopranos that have sung Kltemnestra (and other mezzo parts) to prolong their careers: Resnik, Rysanek, Dernesch, Varnay etc and they were all a lot of fun and very colorful, but give me a real contralto in the role. I think the campy romping works better as herodias anyway.
Ha, ha. I saw the Ludwig Fidelio, I was one of the 40, 000 that was actually there. I had a ticket for a Sills recital for that evening and stopped at the Met before going over to ALice tully Hall. when I saw the opera change from elektra to Fidelio), I bought a ticket (very easy, there were a lot), and sold my Sills ticket. The elektra cover was Inge
Borkh, a thrilling Elektra on record, but during that season she was a mess vocally and I’m guessing that while Bing was willing to let Borkh go onstage as the Dyer’s Wife, elektra was too much for her to carry and so he convinced Ludwig to try a Met Leonore (which was wonderful). I told Ludwig backstage after the performance how thrilling it was to hear her as Leonore but she yelled, “Ja, but the B!!!! Ach!”
The other Met performance from that era that thousands claim to have attended was the sole Nilsson/Vickers Met tristan a few years later. I wasn’t at that one!
With that, Vicar, I concur wholeheartedly. To me Bailey is THE Wotan. The voice is surpassingly beatiful and the wealth of emotion is staggering.
Well, Harry maybe it’s my problem after all, having inherited from the Mozart operas a keen wish for the characters to be 3-D. I think Strauss is THE composer to look for that kind of depth. Maybe not Salome, but for me definitely Elektra. Maybe the play is a study in hysterics, but how can you explain, for example, the delicious oboe solo (borrowing from the string ritornello in Elektra’s monologue) just after Klyt says “einmal nicht stoerrich finde” and before Elektra’s “laesset du nicht den Bruder nicht nach Hause, Mutter?”. For me the orchestral fabric tells us much more about what COULD have been, were the characters not obsessed with their proper idees fixes. There’s an uneasy closeness between Elektra and her mother, for me, and I find it in Strauss’ scoring. The interview here is much, much more than a slinging match a-la Gioconda – Laura. Of course, it’s all lost when Klyt is portrayed as something out of a nightmare. As with Ochs, I always like to feel a bit sorry for the queen. In the Friedrich film, you just wish somebody would rid her of her misery. I find it less humane and intersting. Klyt, in a way, is a forerunner of the Marschallin. They share similar attributes. Anyway, that’s the way I like to think of it, and regarding Elektra the opera as nothing more than a study in hysterics draws me away from it. The Met performance under Luisi stressed the humane and lyrical points within the score, kudos to him and to La Palmer for that.
“I found myself too monstrous, somewhat like a bird of prey. I felt this negated the fact that the woman had once possessed great beauty and dignity. The bloom of youth may have faded from her countenance, but she still retains traces of it along with her regal bearing. Left to my own devices, I certainly would have transposed the brutality of the character to other facets of the dramatic and vocal interpretation…but Mr. Friedrich was adamant and simply ‘outvoted’ me.”
Varnay, on the Friedrich film of Elektra.
Oh what a funny hat, oh what a funny little cat.
Well, sorry Alto that it left no impression on you at all, but while opera is a VERY subjective art, and a great performance to some may leave indifferent to others, there are incontrovertible facts that cannot be denied. That performance merited the largest ovation in history, according to some very senior Met officials who told me that at the party afterwards. By the time the telecast was done, it was January 22, 1994, and the ovation is not quite the same for the reasons I explained above, but it is not too bad
, what do you think of this audience; do you think they, 4000 strong, were left indifferent?
You know where I heard her engage with the words best, actually, was in Salome. Part of the reason I think she might make a good Elektra is that I think unhinged is something she actually has more of a knack for portraying than nobly suffering, which is what is most often asked of her.
I think the closest she came was recording Salome, regarded by most as a mistake, though perhaps less so than Carmen around the same time? Hm, I have the sudden sensation I might be making the Salome up, but the internet tells me I’m not.
Ewa Podles probably the greatest
singer ( notice not opera star but
singer) of our day was shattering
as Klytemnestra with Canadian opera
she will be doing it in Europe with the
company in Warsaw and other cities .I have seen the role done by many of the above mentioned but none can
come close to this phenomenon of
a singer .
I love Ludwig as Klytemnaestra – on the Ozawa/BSO recording, her voice still sounds amazing, and didn’t need any particularly histrionic emoting in her characterization.
That scream, though! One of the dogs always starts howling at that point.
Zschau seems to have come dressed for the cover shoot of a Harlequin Romance novel entitled “Love’s Burning Hotflash”.
SO, DEBBIE VOGT — announces this afternoon in an interview on the
Met broadcast that she will be singing Elektra. I heard no further
details; anyone know if this is news or has it been known before.
I’ve always heard Elektra is an end-of-career role. I wonder?
MarshieMarkII; Welcome home! How very nice to see you back. It has been very boring and lonely here without you.
So — where have you been, what is going on?
I have heard that you are scheduled to appear as Buozo Danato
and King Marke in future NYCO seasons — tell me this is true,
oh, and the Emperor in the new NYCO Turandot. Tell us more.
It’s a great way to go!
I never heard Kuchta, but indeed she was one of those singers who did major roles in medium/small houses, and covered the same parts for the major houses.
At the MET in the early ’60s she stepped in as Brünnhilde a couple of times, but for the broadcast cycle she ws Sieglinde and Gutrune. At Bayreuth in 1968 & 69 she got to do a few Isolde’s when Nilsson was out of voice, and also sang the Göttterdämmerung Brünnhilde.
I’m not surprised that she did Elektra. A useful person to have around the green room.
Vocally speaking, I agree that neither of the sisters would have suited Jessye. The tessitura of Chrysothemis was too high and while most of Elektra would have been doable, I think that there some crucial high notes in the role where Jessye’s upper range would have been tested and where she wouldn’t have been able to deliver teh cutting power. Other than that, she didn’t have a problem with stamina. She sang Didon and Cassandra in the same performance on two occasions. Klytamnestra would have been interesting but I don’t think that Jessye liked to do character roles.
She’s not a Dame – she should be, but she isn’t. You’re thinking of the other, less deserving Dame Felicity – Lott.
The video with Behrens shows why Voigt made such an impression when she burst onto the scene. I mean, thant kind of tonal oppulance right to the top of her voice is just incredible.
Most people in the business called him “Ted” according to his obits.
It’s odd that Fassbaender wasn’t a great Klytämnestra. You would have thought that it would have been a perfect fit with those dark contralto-ish notes. I’ve only seen the Vienna DVD and that may be the Kupfer production – I saw his Welsh version with Debria Browne and Kerstin Meyer and they were both WAY over the top, At Covent Garden in the old production Meyer was a regal, aristocratic old queen rather than some raddled ancient harridan. Whatever happened to Debria Browne? She was an impressive performer, I recall.
La Cieca has always followed the advice given by Vera Galupe-Borszkh: “Please, vhy so formal? ‘Madame’ vill do!”
Kuchta was American wasn’t she. The only recording I have of her is the dress rehearsal of the Karajan condcucted Frosch when Janowitz sang her one and only Kaiserin. Of course they were replaced by Leonie and Christa at the premiere.
OMG, it took me 24 hours to get this. LOL!
Very well put, CerquettiFarrell. Thank you.
My darling gehmal, thank you for the warm welcome, but you can imagine where I was, not terribly happy days, them are. September was especially hard, as I was supposed to be in Vienna…….. Then in November I had to go to Washington, to see Goetterdaemmerung of all operas!!!, because a dear friend was singing in it. I handled the first two acts pretty well, a great performance especially from the orchestra, but the Immolation opening chords really did me in. And I went to the cast party afterwards at the Watergate, where I run into a number of old friends. While I did have a hotel reservation, my friends insisted I stayed with them in Georgetown, the next morning I realized I was one block away from HER majestic former home on 29th and P, another sad day. And so on……. I did see the fantastic From the House of the Dead. What gorgeous music!!! I’d love to say I am back in my usual form, rearing to go, but I am not quite there yet. There is a before and after, unfortunately. But I do enjoy being back here, Cara Cieca’s unending wit, old friends like you, and Cocky, Salomanda, and sharky, and the usual rude obsessives talking about performances they never heard, as fact, and assorted prophets of doom……. But I am attracted to camp like flies to you know what, so here I am.
I AM Gladys Kuchta!!!!! I heard Kuchta in Philly as a very good Brunnhilde in Walkeure, also as Clytemnestra with the greatest overall Elektra I’ve seen, Inge Borkh, at the Met, and as Sieglinde (with Birgit and Jon) and Turandot (not bad).
I heard her do Fidelio in Berlin (she recorded it, released in USA by Nonesuch, with the frankly elderly but still impressive Julius Patzak), I saw her do Elektra and Elsa there as well.
She was one of a generation of very, very good American singers who would be more than welcome and maybe world stars today (Phyllis Curtain fabulous for instance as Salome and the Capriccio Countess in Vienna for instance), Arlene Saunders, Elizabeth Carron and especially Elinor Ross before her neurological illness caused some bad performances at the Met and forced her retirement — she had an IMMENSE voice, thrilling high notes, stamina and temperament and the Norma DVD is wonderful — she is still the best overall Gioconda I’ve seen — I saw Zinka three times but late where she was uneven though the specialness of the timbre was still there but Elinor in her prime had really almost as much in timbre and as much if not more in technical security, of course Big Renata was thrilling her first season or two in the role but she did not have the secure top or the mostly reliable intonation or the pianissimi of Elinor, and Marton who should have sung all the big Wagner roles and Elektra at the Met in the 80’s was also thrilling but Elinor who is American, I think of mixed ethnic heritage, was far more Italian– she was also a terrific Aida, a fabulous Turandot in the time of Nilsson no less, and outstanding in Ballo and Tosca).
Carron was an infinitely better Angelica than Racette or Stratas and a really lovely Lauretta — she would have had more sense than to try Giorgetta. She had less voice than the great Soviero (a revelation in all three roles) and was not as ’special’ as Little Renata (better in her first two attempts at all three roles in I believe 1976 than later, though great interpretively later and sometimes able to pull it together vocally too), also a fabulous Mimi (she reduced De Stefano and the entire audience to sobs in the last act of a Philly Boheme, and people also cried through her third act) and a very good Violetta and Butterfly.
Borkh had more humanity, nuance and heartbreak than the miraculous Nilsson or the scary Varnay (saw her in 1960 in an unforgettable concert with Dimitri Mitropoulos — possibly the most astounding and musical Elektra I’ve ever heard, Levine is a joke in comparison — Dimitri and Borkh can be heard in wonderful sound with the greatest Lisa Della Casa, Madeira and yes, Jackie Horne from Salzburg on the Orfeo d’or pressing and that is fabulous). I have loved Polaski (better in Berlin though) and Schnaut (but the pitch difficulties are always more than incidental in her performances but no worse than at least one other Elektra cited above in bizarre, mentally ill terms, and in other respects infinitely better). I thought Bullock was just OK though she has good routine and a strong take on the role.
Good to see Maury’s review and some funny comments, with only a couple of fools (not taking everybody in).
Oh, btw, I was at Christa’s Fidelio, having hitching hiked down from Yale for Birgit to get a huge surprise (thrilling performance, Christa’s last of the role do or die perhaps rather than perfect with Jon in amazing voice).
Welcome back, Mrs. JC! How does that Salzburg Elektra compare to the Borkh/Mitrop/New York Phil performance with Yeend, Thebom, and Tozzi? Is it “necessary” if one has the latter?
“Dimitri and Borkh can be heard in wonderful sound with the greatest Lisa Della Casa, Madeira and yes, Jackie Horne from Salzburg on the Orfeo d’or pressing and that is fabulous.”
Yes, yes, yes and yes. Mitropoulos adored the score, delved deep and got his hands dirty in it. Shocking and completely right.
Mitropoulous probably the best Elektra out there. He divided the orchestra strings left winds right so although the rec is in mono most everything is crystal clear. And the way the he makes the winds linger before the last cadence into C Major! For my money Borkh is the best Elektra out there, infinitely more touching than the admittedly more secure Nilsson. Della Casa tries hard, and the voice is glorious although strained, Chrys that works alond Strauss’ original intentions (remember the creator Margarethe Siems was originally a dramatic coloratura, and the role is a some freakish dramatic pre-twist on Zerbinetta, in a way, she then went on to create Resi). Madeira is unsubtle but the voice carries the character.
I also love the wartime Jochum with Schlueter and the most frightening Klytemnestra ever, Gusta Hammer I think it is. Schlueter also did a very commited Elaktra for Beecham live, and this has, of course, the best Chrys in Ljuba Welitsch, pristine-voiced. She was born to sing this. I also love the RCA highlights with Reiner and Borkh, shattering throughout, and Schoeffler is the best Orest I think.
For studio work, Sawallisch is lyrical and transparent, though he has share of high drama. Cast best EMI could have assembled at the time. I especially cherish Lipovsek and Studer. Bohm is a classic although Schech is a let-down, as are the cuts. Dresden is THE orchestra for this music.
WELCOME BACK MRS. JOHN CLAGGART!
We have missed your posts so much.
Today our constant vigilance has finally paid off !
Please don’t get deprive us of your presence in the queendom of La Cieca again, or allow the lesser lights to drive you to distraction.
You have the duty to set us all “straight”.