Elektra

Mycenae is ruled by a pair of murderers: Electra has only one thought after the murder of her father Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus – revenge! In his powerfully evocative one-act opera, Richard Strauss portrays the psychogram of a traumatized woman with exquisite polyphony. Director newcomer Elena Artisi, along with chief conductor Vassilis Christopoulos, explores this highly dramatic milestone of operatic literature with a sharp eye.

Electra is obsessed: her entire being revolves around the murder of her father Agamemnon, who was killed by her own mother Clytemnestra together with Aegisthus upon his return from the Trojan War. From this deed grows in Electra the all-consuming desire for vengeance. When her brother Orest returns from exile, fate takes its irreversible course.
The tragic family story of Electra is among the most gripping material of Greek mythology. In the context of emerging psychoanalysis, Hugo von Hofmannsthal created a modern tragedy, whose archaic force Richard Strauss transformed into expressive sound worlds of unprecedented intensity. He pushes tonality to its limits and condenses the "psychic polyphony" that he had already established in Salome.
Director Elena Artisi presents the work as a powerful study of traumatized women, who cannot escape the spiral of violence and counter-violence and the suffocating silence surrounding it. However, with the intensification of the events, a liberation from the toxic family structure also seems possible.

In German with German surtitles.

Tickets: are available online via ticketzentrum.at as well as at the Ticket Center, Kaiser-Josef-Platz 10, 8010 Graz.

Public transport accessibility: Tram 1, 7 | Stop: Kaiser-Josef Platz/Opera