Elektra Redux

The morning of the last performance of San Francisco Opera's Elektra, which was also the last performance of the season, I was lucky enough to receive a text from a friend offering me the additional ticket she had for the evening, as her expected guest had unexpectedly had to drop out. I say I was lucky, but it took a moment for the luck to sink in. I had been out late the night before, & I sleep poorly anyway, waking up feeling more tired than when I went to bed, & a sudden change of plan can throw me. I tend to respond quickly, & my first impulse was to decline, but wiser heads (well, mine) prevailed & I told myself to ponder this offer for at least 10 minutes before responding. It didn't even take that long. My brain adjusted & my fingers typed out the response that should have been immediate as well as obvious: yes, thank you!

This revival was something to see as often as possible, just as the original 2017 production was. Both times the powerhouse cast made the run a must-see (or rather, a must-hear). But there was another selling point: the production itself, by Keith Warner. Set in a museum display of Bronze Age Greece, it provided an evocative, rich, & exciting concept. Partly, as I said in my post on this year's revival (which is here), there's just a sense of gratitude that someone did something with this piece besides throwing the cast in vaguely Grecian tunics amid a few shattered columns. But there's more to it than that; I've seen other productions of this work that took some chances (I recall one with huge sides of raw slaughtered beef hanging up around the stage). And productions that do more than sketch in the basics are not always popular. There is definitely a large section of the opera audience that resists anything that indicates an "attitude" towards the work: updating, deconstructing, rethinking, whatever. I put "attitude" in quotation marks because of course there's always an attitude of some sort being displayed; staging is inherently interpretation.

Opera audiences are usually quick, too quick in my frequently expressed opinion, to sneer at any production that tries anything different. Yet this production, so provocative, so very much a "concept", not only seems to have escaped the usual jibes: it seems to be, as far as I can tell, that rare thing, a production that is actually beloved, even apart from the musical execution.

I think what a lot of people object to in most "concept" productions is the misalignment between what the production is imposing on the work & what people go to the opera for: many people attend to get swept up in grand emotions, transported to a different time & place, an alternate level of reality. Most "concept" productions drily deconstruct the usual operatic narratives & tropes, offering an intellectual review of the grand passions, an overlay of present-day preoccupations on the escapist fantasy many in the audience are hoping for. (Neither side is really right or wrong; the audience's assumptions about classic works can be as wrong-headed as an inappropriate interpretation.) In other words, the audience feels condescended to by the "concept": oh, you want sweeping romance? Cute! Here's a presentation that will dismiss what you want in favor of shoving the sour world as we see it back in your face. Perhaps that is why there is so much anger directed at productions of this type; fortunately the irritating dismissal of all such productions as "Eurotrash" seems to be going out of fashion, at least in my hearing, but the anger remains. These productions can be good, or bad; but usually a lot of the audience dismisses them automatically based on the concept, not on its execution.

What I'm guessing is that the Warner production manages to hit the sweet spot between offering a thoughtful critique of what is going on in the old myths / operas & how they resonate for contemporary audiences & sheer horror-film effectiveness. In other words, the production respects the material & the way its creators intended it to be presented, yet also offers us a fruitful alternative view of what's going on.

The thrills were undeniable. At this final performance, I was surprised when the killing of Klytemnestra, her severed head held aloft by her son & killer Orest, was met not only with audible gasps, as at most performances, but a fairly sizable round of applause. It seemed a bit bloodthirsty. (Maybe people didn't know her backstory? Her actions didn't come out of nowhere. Either way, it's a tribute to the intensity of the performances & the production.) A friend asked me later if there was a special energy to this, the final performance of the run & of the season, & maybe there was a bit of going-for-broke but as far as I could see, & as far as I heard, all the performances were pretty much all-out. One difference that signaled the end of the season: at the curtain call, one of the violinists (I assume she was retiring, or at least moving on) was called up on stage by conductor Eun Sun Kim to take a solo bow. She was showered with bouquets from the pit, which was lovely to see.

So Elektra provided a suitable capstone to a generally thrilling San Francisco Opera season. There's often a certain poignancy to wandering through the lobby for one last time as the attendees for the final performance trickle out (until we all start trickling back in for the next season, in a couple of months) but this time we were all on an Elektra rush. As we left the Opera House, the surrounding area was even more chaotic than usual, as Civic Center was already filling up with Pride Weekend partiers, & the train ride back to the East Bay was a Boschian hellscape. But it was still worth it to experience this Elektra one more time. I almost said one last time, but here's hoping this production, which I think we can call classic as well as beloved, comes around again before another ten years have passed.