So Much Blood
If you have the money to see it, you really need to see Lyric Opera’s production of Elektra. Of the three operas I’ve seen at Lyric, this is by far the best one—which says something because I loved all of the approximately 240 minutes of Lohengrin. The onstage performers are terrific, the set is simultaneously detailed, spooky and simple and the Lyric Opera Orchestra’s performance of Strauss’ score is fantastic.
That being said, I appreciated the production because of having studied ancient Greek drama in depth at the college’s I’ve attended. The ending made sense to me because I knew what happened next in terms of Aesechylus’ Orestia and I truly appreciated having the deaths happen offstage and the presence of one large door. Since this was a new production, they could have gone with more of an avant garde, abstract approach and not respected the text, but this one did. But I gathered from listing to people waiting for taxis after the performance that the ending didn’t make sense to them, which might be a problem.
By the way, there is a lot of blood in this production.
