Elektra (Opera)

About

Based on the great tragedy of the same name by Greek tragedian Sophocles, Richard Strauss' opera Elektra would deal once more with the femme fatale figure in antiquity, similarly to his previous opera Salome, which premiered four years prior in 1905. The story follows Elektra as she plots revenge with her siblings against their mother Queen Clytemnestra for murdering their father King Agamemnon in cold blood. Strauss, in conjunction with the opera's librettist Hugo von Hoffmansthal, successfully captures the feelings of horror and dread conveyed by Sophocles tragedy. However, through the use of music, this emotion is magnified intensely and presents the often twisted psyches of the characters to the audience in new and imaginative ways. One of the opera's great contributions to the development of Western music has come to be known as the "Electra chord," which, like the harmonic advances made in Richard Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde some years earlier, served to further catapult music into new realms of complexity and expressiveness.