Christine Goerke as Elektra.Michael Cooper
Maybe even more than we love stories about people with problems much bigger than our own, we love stories about dysfunctional families.
When Richard Strauss wrote his 1909 one-act opera, Elektra, he was the latest in a string of composers who drew inspiration from the supremely maladjusted house of Agamemnon. Murdered by his wife, Klytämnestra, and her lover, Aegisth, the slain king is survived by his traumatized children, scattered across the world in their various paths of despair. Elektra, one daughter of Agamemnon, still lives in the house where her father was killed; while the rest of the household has adapted to the new “regime” under Klytämnestra, Elektra remains unswayed, and obsessed with vengeance.
The Canadian Opera Company’s production of Elektra premiered in 1997, and was last seen onstage in 2007. The production comes with a sense of continuity: it has been performed both in the O’Keefe Centre and in the Four Seasons Centre – the COC’s old and new homes. British soprano Susan Bullock sang Elektra in 2007, and in this 2019 revival she returns as Klytämnestra. (It must be said, that if a soprano is to leave behind an awesome role, the move from Elektra to Klytämnestra at least comes with the thrilling trade-off of getting to make one of the great entrances in all of opera.)
Bullock makes way for U.S. powerhouse Christine Goerke, who has brought her portrayal of Elektra to San Francisco, Houston and The Metropolitan Opera in New York. Goerke calls this compact, relentless opera “a really long sprint,” where pacing is everything. Perhaps that’s what felt so extraordinary about her performance, that it was impressive in waves, shocks of sound that come just when we grow comfortable. Goerke is onstage for the entire performance, and even amid a cast dominated by women’s voices, her sound is unmistakably unique. Next to the purity of Erin Wall as Elektra’s sister, Chrysothemis, and the snarl of Bullock’s Klytämnestra, Goerke’s first word of the evening – “Allein!” (“Alone!”) – hits the ear as something wonderfully off.
Erin Wall as Elektra's sister, Chrysothemis (foreground) and Christine Goerke as Elektra.Michael Cooper
Elektra makes an impressive dramatic arc over the 100 minutes of the opera, from offensive and anti-social, to lost, to triumphant. Strauss, the fascinating breed of feminist that he was, seems to punctuate Elektra’s important emotional shifts with the arrival – short-lived as it is – of a man. As Oreste, Elektra’s thought-to-be-dead brother, Wilhelm Schwinghammer’s laserlike baritone lives up to the hype of his character, and injects in Elektra a deserved sense of stability and hope. And in his brief moment of dark comic relief, Michael Schade is hateful as Aegisth. The cigar, the nasality in his sound, the barking of orders – Schade does have a knack for playing a scumbag.
In his brief moment of dark comic relief, Michael Schade, right, is hateful as Aegisth.Michael Cooper
The production, however – though revitalized with new costumes by Anita Stewart and lighting design by Mimi Sherin – feels vaguely dated, even superfluous. The irregular angles and surrealist dimensions of Derek McLane’s sets have a clear function of being disorientating; the dolls and rocking horses lightly strewn across the stage give us a blunt reminder that Elektra, in her psychological state of arrested development, is forever young.
The flashes of meaning in the production’s design don’t detract from the story, but there were certainly moments I decided to ignore. If done right, Elektra is an opera about people; that means it’s about excellent singing, which we most certainly get in this cast. Goerke is a tireless presence onstage, and every moment that she doesn’t carry, maestro Johannes Debus does with the COC Orchestra.
The irregular angles and surrealist dimensions of Derek McLane’s sets have a clear function of being disorientating.Michael Cooper
It’s no doubt a good sign that a cast and conductor carry an opera beyond the scope of its visual elements. We always want an opera to stand on its own, where the untouchable elements – text, singers, and orchestra – are all that’s needed for it to take effect. Under those criteria, the COC’s Elektra – perhaps now an iconic production for the company – is a definitive success.