ElelHra's Return

Metropolitan Opera's Rudolf Bing ticked off the reasons for hauling Richard Strauss's Elektra out of 13-year storage, and found them ample. Opera fans, in the house and in the radio audience, had already shown a fondness for Strauss's lurid Salome. The set for Elektra, designed in 1932, was not too bad, and he had a good cast and a first-class Strauss conductor, Fritz Reiner. Moreover, after hearing Soprano Astrid Varnay in a concert version in Carnegie Hall two years ago, Bing knew he had an Elektra.

Last week even Met goers already inured to Salome got a jolting reminder of how much more gruesome a shocker Elektra is. From the time the curtain went up until it came down an hour and 40 minutes later, there was almost no letup in the screaming tension on the dim-lit stage, or the loud, lewd dissonances from the oversized (112 pieces) orchestra in the pit. At Elektra's end, the audience seemed to slump exhausted in their seats. Then they roused for a standing ovation.

It was a triumph of the whole over several of its parts. Soprano Varnay looked a bit too well scrubbed, in her sackcloth, for the Elektra of Sophocles and Librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Elektra is a princess sunk close to animal level in her passion to avenge the murder of her father, Agamemnon, by her mother Klytaemnestra. Wagnerian Varnay's gestures were too often reminiscent of Brueunnhilde. But vocally she was sumptuous throughout--no mean feat, since Elektra has to sing almost continually over a vivid orchestra barrage* from curtain to curtain. The singing of Queen Klytaemnestra (new German Contralto Elisabeth Hoengen) was a trifle weak, her acting a little too rabid. As the avenging brother Orest, Baritone Hans Hotter stood like a wooden Indian, but sang his brief part splendidly. The whole performance was seldom exciting as spectacle, but musically it was overpowering from start to finish.

In its ovation, the audience gave the honors about equally to Varnay, Reiner and Strauss. General Manager Rudolf Bing took no bows, but he wore a broad smile. With no more brand-new productions to pull out of his hat this season, he had pulled a palpable hit out of the old warehouse.

*Legend has it that at a rehearsal Composer Strauss once exhorted the orchestra: "Louder! Louder! I can still hear the singers."

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