If anything could drown out preoccupying thoughts about the Met's announcement of James Levine's retirement and transition to conductor-emeritus status, it's Elektra.
Loud, nasty and relentlessly brilliant, Richard Strauss's greatest opera is an event when it's well performed, but especially so in this final production by Patrice Chéreau, a director who was born to tell Sophocles's revenge parable about Elektra plotting the death of her mother for murdering her father.
The cast on Thursday's opening was as promising as can be with dramatic soprano Nina Stemme in the hard-to-cast title role plus two significant figures from the production's Aix-en-Provence debut in 2013: soprano Adrianne Pieczonka as Elektra's sister Chrysothemis and the great singing actress Waltraud Meier as their guilt-ridden mother Klytamnestra. The pared-down expressionistic Richard Peduzzi set design plus conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen igniting the Met Orchestra beyond its considerable capabilities were safety nets for whatever ups and down the singers had. It was a genuine Elektra encounter, and once the performers settle in a bit more, it'll be even better.
Though not one to return to the same theatrical ground, Chéreau, who died of lung cancer in 2013 shortly after this production's premiere, conceived this Elektra similarly to his 2003 production of Jean Racine's play Phedre with his zeal to achieve maximum veracity. Towering but simple sets in dark muted colors and non-descript costumes guaranteed that there was no distraction from characters, plot and performers. In Elektra, Chéreau's innovations included the elevation of the role of the Fifth Maid — cast here with a major personality, veteran soprano Roberta Alexander — to a more significant family friend. Klytamnestra wasn't an a grotesque old crone but someone who had achieved the power and exterior affluance she craved only to be crumbling from within. Meier fully rendered her with every possible emotional detail (even if she didn't quite have the vocal heft).
The warm-weather costumes in Aix were replaced by a more bundled up Met cast.
Cleverly, Chéreau respected the Greek tradition of having bloodshed occur offstage, but he brings Klytamnestra onstage so soon after Elektra's brother Orest does the mortal deed that he achieves the visceral effect that modern audiences expect. The ending, strangely, doesn't work. Elektra does a grotesque triumphal dance and then turns catatonic as Orest slowly exits. The only thing it says to me is that revenge isn't sweet, but most adults know that.
Sopranos singing the title role inevitably have wall-of-sound moments when any specificity of pitch disintegrates into an all-purpose vocalization in which differentiation is only implied by vibrato speed. It's a desperate sound well-known to those who heard Eva Marton's later performances. Nina Stemme had them early on in her opening monologue but pulled her voice together, managing some fine soft-singing that showed the humanity behind this revenge-obsessed character. In the "Recognition Scene," where she reunites with her brother, she had great interpretive specificity as well as depth of tone. Stemme is a high-personality artist, but her voice has a distinctive sound only when not being pushed. Even so, memories of Christine Goerke's more visceral Elektra earlier this season with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall were not challenged.
Pieczonka sang convincingly in her thankless role that can seem like little more than a theatrical device. Eric Owens was an excellent fit for Orest with the more baritonal aspects of his voice telling you that his character is more an avenging angel than a warrior.
Having conductor Salonen for an extended residency at Lincoln Center (including lots of intriguing New York Philharmonic activities) has truly enlivened the city landscape, so singular is his personality in the music he chooses and the way he delves into it. Orchestral musicians say that Elektra is like a concerto for every instrument, and it's a perfect match for a brilliant problem solver such as Salonen, who consistently found the dramatic core in Strauss's high-traffic orchestration and a rhythmic elasticity that gives the music extra physicality and dimension. I wish he'd hold back a bit more for the sake of the singers, but he makes up for it with the psychological specificity to which he embues their accompanying music, so much that Strauss's quasi-recitatives were almost more interesting than the set pieces.