Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site olivej.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!tektronix!hplabs!oliveb!olivej!greg From: greg@olivej.UUCP Newsgroups: net.music.classical Subject: Dec. 15 Metropolitan "Elektra" broadcast Message-ID: <263@olivej.UUCP> Date: Wed, 19-Dec-84 19:36:29 EST Article-I.D.: olivej.263 Posted: Wed Dec 19 19:36:29 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 22-Dec-84 01:16:55 EST Organization: Olivetti ATC, Cupertino, Ca Lines: 75 A couple of months ago I posted my feelings about a San Francisco Opera performance of Richard Strauss' "Elektra". Last Saturday's Met broadcast provided interesting contrasts and comparisons. I heard the broadcast on unfamiliar equipment, but my impression is that the sound quality was a marked improvment over anything I heard last year (I missed the "Barber of Seville" the previous week). In the San Francisco performance, I was very impressed with the clarity and transparency of the orchestral part as realized by the San Francisco Opera orchestra under Jeffrey Tate. I felt that his sense of balance and the way he encouraged his players to maintain a beautiful tone even in the heaviest, most dissonant passages contributed gave the work a greater power and grandeur than I had experienced before. Others apparently did not agree. The Met performance was conducted by James Levine and while there was still a great deal of beauty to be heard in the playing, particularly the horn solos, the overall approach was far more hell-bent-for-leather. This was reflected in the vocal performances. In San Francisco, Janis Martin used a cool, clear and evenly produced soprano (incapable of reaching several critical top notes) to build a characterization that attempted to preserve the nobility and dignity the character would, as a princess, have had before the murder of her father. This added lyricism and vulnerability gave Elektra greater stature, in my mind, than the raving she-demon that is usually portrayed. I didn't see Ute Vinzing, the Met Elektra, but from the broadcast would presume hers was the more usual raving, manic portrayal. The voice was thick, "covered" sounding and uneven in its mid-range, sometimes almost comical when plunging through register breaks. In contrast to Janis Martin, though, her top register blazed like a beacon, with rock steady high C's making a tremendous impact at the end of the first narrative as well as at the climax of the confrontation with Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra herself was Christa Ludwig in the Met broadcast, and immensely better than her San Francisco equivalent. Ludwig has been a phenomenal singing actress for some 30 years now. Having heard the harsh, darkly dramatic singing she did in this performance it came as a bit of a shock to hear the announcer at the end mentioning the fact that she originally made her Met debut as Cherubino. Her past range of roles, ranging over all registers of the female voice, have included standard-setting achievements in such diverse parts (in which I've seen her) as Octavian, Ortrud, Dyer's Wife ('Frau Ohne Schatten') and Eboli. The voice sounded hard, sometimes shrill, and generally lacking the "plush" it used to have on this broadcast. It was, though, always singing of power and substance with biting, incisive declamation of the text. Comparisons of the other singers came to something of a draw. Johanna Meier was adequate as Chrysothemis, more evenly projected than Carol Neblett in San Francisco, but nobody since Leonie Rysanek has been able to revel in the soaring, high-lying writing that Strauss composed for this part. I have to say, though, that I feel even this opera, which still represents Strauss in a more creative vein than his later works, shows a marked deterioration of inventive skills over "Salome". "Salome", even with the cheap movie-music "Dance of the Seven Veils" has a variety of color and beauty of writing that support Strauss' tremendous skill as an orchestral and vocal composer. In the case of "Elektra" and even more so with the later works, I hear the skill but less and less of the beauty and imaginativeness. - Greg Paley