The sense of expectation that surrounded the return of Patrice Chéreau's production of Elektra to La Scala is testament to the artistry of the French director, arguably the greatest the nation has produced in the postwar period. Time and again, Chéreau's conceptions bore to the heart of the drama, and through an often startling simplicity of directorial means. The director's Elektra, his last production, opened in Aix in 2013 before travelling to La Scala....

Staging Elektra at Aix-en-Provence’s Festival in summer 2013 was Patrice Chéreau’s last work, since the film, theatre and opera director died in October of the same year. Having visited Milano, New York, Berlin and Helsinki, this production has finally arrived to Barcelona, with almost the same vocal cast that premiered it three years ago, who worked under direct orders from Chéreau himself. They are meeting again in Barcelona, for the last time it looks like,...

What a story, what a character Richard Strauss and his co-genius Hugo von Hoffmannsthal have created here at the beginning of the 20th century. The expressive music and the female wild brutality were shocking and affecting the audience at the same time. Elektra, full of grieve, is seeking for revenge for her beloved father's death, accusing her mother and stepfather, exposing herself in front of the palace as a living monument of self destruction, desire up to mentally defection and...

 With merciless sequence is the audience drawn into Wozzeck’s circles of suffering in Büchner’s play. Berg’s music creates passion and compassion of and for the characters and victims of this inescapable orbit. The precision of Andrea Breth’s unstoppable clockwork in light of Wozzeck’s fate is a supreme staging and interpretation completely based on strict reserve and subordination to plot, text, and subtext. The purism of the approach...