Elektra

Consumed by desire to avenge her father's murder, Elektra seeks to recruit her siblings to kill their mother and her paramour.

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• Elektra

  We are in a contemporary museum. At closing time a visitor hides herself inside. She becomes obsessed with understanding the ancient Greek myth on display: the fall of the house of Atreus—a family steeped in generations of ill deeds, guilt, and revenge. These wrongs have been exacerbated by Agamemnon giving up his own daughter, Iphigenia, as a human blood-sacrifice to the gods. The visitor obsessively re-watches a film that has been showing in the museum: it details maidservants performing a human sacrifice, while gossiping about a mad creature, Elektra, a daughter of the house, who has been driven crazy by the deeds done to her father. Only one of the women present comes to the defense of the much abused Elektra; her punishment for such compassion is to become the sacrificial victim. This myth seems so resonant to the visitor that the film comes alive to her. The visitor, someone also in mourning, becomes Elektra.

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Audio excerpts are from the 1997 performance of Elektra with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, conducted by Jiri Kout.

…dein Blut rings um dein Grab/Elizabeth Connell (Elektra); Wie stark du bist/Elizabeth Connell (Elektra); Orest!/Elizabeth Connell (Elektra).

• Matthew Shilvock's Intro Elektra

• …dein Blut rings um dein Grab

• Wie stark du bist

• Orest!