Strauss: Elektra (LIVE)

It’s a stunning vocal marathon, with riveting intensity. You owe it to yourself to experience the vocal grandeur and blazing drama of this passionate heroine. She’s the Mycenaean princess whose father, Agamemnon, was murdered by her mother, Klytemnestra, leaving Elektra hell-bent on revenge. As Richard Strauss’s staggeringly powerful orchestra moves inexorably toward the opera’s hair-raising finale, the music gives you a composer at his zenith—magnificently theatrical and devastatingly moving.

With Nina Stemme as Elektra, Elza Van Den Heever as Chrysothemis, Michaela Martens as Klytämnestra and Iain Paterson as Orest. Donald Runnicles conducts.