Wednesday October 21st, 2015 - Conductor Andris Nelsons (above) leading a powerful concert performance of Richard Strauss's ELEKTRA given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. The evening was a great personal triumph for soprano Christine Goerke, who gave a vocally and physically super-charged rendering of one of opera's most demanding roles.
Strauss calls for a massive orchestra for this, his most demented work; the Boston players were sprawled across the entire space of the Carnegie stage, with the chorus at the end singing from an upper tier of the hall. The musicians played their hearts out and, under Nelsons' authoritative baton, they delivered the music with tremendous flair in all its glistening glory. There were also superbly refined stretches, notably in the Klytaemnestra scene where the maestro and musicians painted a neurotic sound setting for an amazingly nuanced performance of the role by Jane Henschel.
The large cast included some names to reckon with in the smaller roles: Nadine Secunde (Overseer), Elizabeth Byrne (Confidante), the Met's Mark Schowalter (Young Servant) and stalwart basso Kevin Langan (Old Servant/Orestes' Guardian).
In the opening scene, the psychopathic maids were a raucous lot; as they carried on their vile gossip session about Elektra - the royal princess reduced to the status of a caged animal in her own home - Ms. Goerke, in a striking blood-red gown, strode among the violins in a state of fevered anxiousness. At last the maids hauled off the fifth of their number to be beaten for defending Elektra, and Ms. Goerke took center stage.
She began the great monolog with sounds of deep, guttural anguish. As in her recent Met Turandot, Goerke's voice narrowed as she ventured higher and some of the upper notes were covered by the orchestra. This necessitated an adjustment for those of us inured to the likes of Nilsson, Behrens, and Dame Gwyneth Jones in this music. Yet Goerke knew what she was doing and she went about the music on her own terms; by the scene with Klytaemnestra, the Goerke voice was firing on all cylinders and she delivered a performance on a par with her career-defining portrayal of the Dyer's Wife at The Met in 2013.
Above: Christine Goerke
The soprano's portrayal of Elektra was so committed and intense: she entered into the physicality of the role as if in a staged performance, interacting brilliantly with her colleagues and even including a frantic, manic dance at the end. Vocally she sailed forth undaunted by the orchestra's volume and hurling out the character's dramatic punch lines ("Triff noch einmal!") with force. Summoning up a colossal effort for the last sprint, Goerke packed a final punch with her ecstatic "Schweig, und tanze!" before collapsing into her chair. The ensuing ovation for the intrepid soprano was epic, and very much well-deserved.
As the hapless Chrysothemis, Gun-Brit Barkmin made a far better impression than she had as Salome in this same hall in 2014. Slender of frame and of voice, she nevertheless finds a way of projecting over the orchestra and her shining top notes made me think she might be a good SIEGFRIED Brunnhilde. Errant pitch was sometimes evident, but overall Ms. Barkmin did well and was a good foil for Ms. Goerke.
Jane Henschel (above), though the top of her voice must now be handled with care, gave such a illuminatingly subtle and detailed performance as the demented Klytaemnestra - playing off the words and using a kozmic array of vocal colours - that a few random strained notes were only of passing worry. She and Goerke made their encounter crackle with verbal vibrancy: the most dramatically engrossing passage of the evening.
James Rutherford was a sturdy-voiced but not especially imaginative Orestes. The great Recognition Scene was not persuasively staged, though Goerke's singing after the revelation was wonderful....and deeply felt; and here the orchestra playing was sublime. Gerhard Siegel was a capital Aegisth, vividly neurotic and strongly sung: his final "Weh mir!", voiced onstage, was a lightning bolt rather than a last gasp.