I hope professor Minter doesn’t mind my saying that the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Richard Strauss’s Elektra was stratospheric; I could not think of a better way to describe it. I was enthralled by the performance and my surroundings. Carnegie Hall was absolutely stunning— it’s stairs a little too steep and possibly life-threatening— but overall, breathtakingly beautiful; although the quote on the program which states that Carnegie Hall enhances the music was a bit too narcissistic of them for me, despite it’s truth.
I really appreciated the music in this piece. While the singing was incredible and impressive, it was the music of the show that captivated me; it added another dimension that was enriching to the performance as a whole . At times it was subdued and allowed for the singing to take the center stage, while other times it was in sync with the text of the opera in an eerie way that seemed to almost echo the emotion in the text, and other times when the characters were caught in moments of contemplation the music took charge with its haunting tones. I especially appreciated the power of the music, which got really loud and much faster paced, when Elektra and her brother reunited; it was alive and struck every nerve ending, making the audience alert. My favorite moment in the piece was when the string instruments produced music that expressed the uneasiness of Elektra while Orestes went to kill their mother; it was haunting and created a sense of uneasiness that was later clarified with her realizing that she had forgotten to give him the axe.
The conductor was a fascinating spectacle throughout the performance Something about his hand gestures was almost hypnotic to me. It felt like he was performing a magic act, as if he willed the music to flow out of the instruments. He reigned the music but at the same time the music somehow possessed his body and dictated his movements as well; the music and the conductor were interconnected.
The singing was also powerful. Initially I found it difficult and almost comical (how immature of me) that a character that is meant to look like a worn, abused servant was singing about her hardships in a red ball gown. I thought I would not be able to connect to the piece as well as I would to a more theatrical presentation of it, but I was wrong. The vocal power and raw emotion of each character conveyed the story beautifully in a way that emotionally impacted the audience, even if it was in a foreign language.
The audience was also very interesting to observe. I was struck by all the people who had binoculars with them and then i recalled that it is a perfectly common practice when attending operas, at least that’s what movies suggest, and then I wished I had a pair also but that thought quickly disappeared once I saw the guy in front of me had brought an acoustic guitar with him. As you can tell I wasn’t always focused on the performance— my attention span can’t last two hours without the occasional break— but even in the moments when I was in a trance, only aware of the simultaneous, identical motion of all of the violin bows, a sudden change in music would always call my attention back to the performance.
It was a great performance and I thought that the Ricola by the stairs at the end of the night added a nice touch to the whole experience.