Following Balázs Kovalik’s production of Elektra at the State Opera, audience members are likely to look at their environment with different eyes the next time they visit the baths. The set – designed by Csaba Antal – is surgically cold with metallically gleaming showers. Although all traces of Klytaemnestra’s gruesome murder of her husband Agamemnon have been removed, the apparent idyll of the bathing maidservants still creates a sense of unease.
This is how Kovalik’s Elektra begins, developing into a furious evening of opera. Kovalik treats with psychological precision the plot’s two triangular relationships: that of Elektra and Chrysothemis to their tyrannical mother Klytaemnestra and that of the three dissimilar siblings Elektra, Chrysothemis and Orestes.
Nadine Secunde, the renowned American soprano, sings the difficult title role as though unleashed: her strong voice bristles with expression and drama, whilst avoiding the common pitfall of making Elektra over hysterical.
Her partners on stage are just as impressive as Secunde. Agnes Baltsa as Klytaemnestra is perhaps a less agile actress than Secunde, but her powerful presence, and her wonderful strong mezzo lend the queen the necessary toughness, whilst also allowing a hint of her underlying weakness in the narration of her nightmares. Éva Bátori with her soft soprano is convincing as Elektra’s timid younger sister who is eager for reconciliation.
The second set of relationships between the three children of Agamemnon is psychologically more complex, which the director captures by underlining the different time dimensions in which the three figures lead their lives. Chrysothemis lives entirely for the future and appears in a wedding dress despite the absence of a groom in happy expectation of her fate as a woman. The past is embodied by Elektra, who has sworn to enact vengeance. Orestes, the realist, performed by Béla Perencz bursts into this conflict between future and past. In a business suit and sunglasses he stands for a calculating present, and the logic of necessity.
The orchestra of the State Opera plays superbly under János Kovács, producing a soft and warm sound. Although in places this means it makes the corners and edges of the score too round, this does not detract from the excellent overall performance.
The State Opera has pulled off a real coup with Strauss’ Elektra: it’s a must for lovers of opera and a good way in for those who would like to discover the genre beyond the clichés of the familiar bel canto hits.
Getting there
District VI, Andrássy út 22.
Tel.: 353-0170
Further performances:
11 and 15 December at 7pm, 6 January at 5pm and 10 January at 7pm
