In 2002, Antonio Pappano introduced himself as the incoming music director of the Royal Opera with a production of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, directed by Christof Loy. Now his final new show in charge is more Strauss, staged once again by Loy. In one respect at least their Elektra makes a fitting farewell for Pappano, as he and the Royal Opera House orchestra realise this gratuitously overwrought score with almost frightening intensity. If its musical excesses sometimes make one long for the economy of Monteverdi as a reminder of what should really matter in music drama, and perhaps to emphasise that great opera does not always have to be so self-indulgent, Pappano ensures that none of the teeming detail with which Strauss underpins his singers is missed, while the the recognition scene, in which Elektra is reunited with her brother Orest, is the opera’s one moment of quiet lyrical beauty.
Almost every other aspect of the evening, though, is disappointing. Loy locates this classical tale in Vienna early in the 20th century; Johannes Leiacker’s unchanging set shows the grey inner courtyard of a palace, in which the below-stairs staff, Elektra among them, busy themselves rather aimlessly, while the dysfunctional family they serve can be glimpsed through the windows above them. But other than that rather literal translation, Loy’s production offers little to illuminate the drama or offer a fresh perspective on it, leaving the music to propel the tragedy to its grim conclusion.
More significantly there is little sense that the protagonists know who they really are; the desire to avenge her father’s murder that is all-consuming for Elektra seems almost caricatured, while the loneliness of Klytämnestra’s life of luxury is hardly suggested. And when you have those roles sung by Nina Stemme and Karita Mattila respectively, both of them hugely experienced, compelling stage performers, then something has gone seriously wrong.
In fact neither was at their best on the opening night, with Stemme’s singing becoming increasingly effortful as the performance went on and Mattila never stamping her authority on a role that in theory at least should fit her like a glove. By far the most impressive of the central trio was Sara Jakubiak, managing to make Chrysothemis a genuinely sympathetic figure, and so intelligently sung. Ägisth is Charles Workman, sturdy and secure in an unrewarding role, while it was only with the appearance of Łukasz Goliński’s beautifully clear Orest, that one realised how little of Hofmannsthal’s text was otherwise coming across; there was never any doubt that it was the orchestra that was the central character here.
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