Shocking

1 If I was an opera correspondent, then I would have lost my job. The last contribution was posted on 6 July. The operas have been performed, but there has been no recognition on the blog. No note, no recollection. For some, the experience itself is sufficient; others want to recall the experience and catch some aspects of it (at least). Yet others move between the two responses.

2 Elektra was shocking. On the journey home I wrote 'Raw, abrasive, destructive, chaotic, avenging, harsh'. Those terms still seem to be apt. The setting, the lighting complemented each other in presenting a world in which people treated each other badly and did so in a Hobbesian environment. Life was certainly brutish, nasty, and for some, if not for all, would be short.

3 A dangerous place, a primitive one. A coward for a mother, one whose lust for a murderer has swamped her obligation to her husband and his memory. The heroic murderer - Elektra's ironic description - is one whose valiant actions all take place in bed. A mother who, with her dead husband's replacement, will imprison her own daughter 'inside a tower where [she] will not see the light of sun or moon again'. A sister also confined to the 'foul prison' a sister who longs for release, for a coupling even with a peasant, for children so that she'd 'warm them to [her] bosom on wintry nights when the hut is shaken by stormy weather'.

4 But she is held 'firmly captive' by the 'iron clamp' which is Elektra's influence, the one whose hate is tireless, is inexorable, who hate makes the rutting couple tremble. Elektra dominates. On stage throughout the opera, she exudes hatefulness. There can be no compromise. The dreadful act must be avenged, or else the wrongdoers must vanguish the avengers. Either way, it is a clash to the death.

5 And so it was. From the clash, from the deaths comes new life. '..... all of those alive have spattered blood on them and are themselves wounded, and yet all are radiant, all are embracing and rejoicing. A thousand torches are brightly burning'. Orestes and his followers have triumphed. And Elektra ... 'How could I not hear the music? It's coming from me. The thousands who are bearing torches on high, whose footsteps, who innumerable untold myriad footsteps make the earch resound with such hollow rumbling - all are waiting for me. I know it, that they are all waiting ... .

5.1 And her face .... 'I was a black cadaver in the living, but this very moment I am the fire of life and my bright flame is consuming the darkness of the world. My complexion's whiter far than the shining moon's white face'.

6 Victory. The transformation from black cadaver to the fire of life. The ecstasy. Death. Consummation. Regeneration.


Intoxicating.