Elektra at Teatr Wielki - Opera Narodowa, Moniuszko Auditorium

Willy Decker is undoubtedly one of the most important opera directors in the world. His plays are staged from Paris, Vienna, London, through Brussels, Madrid, to Amsterdam and Salzburg. Decker’s Electra is monumental, but not static. The mythical story of a family who are unable to stop the destructive process of violence and crime gains nobility and purity. However, it’s not clear if it’s the music of Richard Strauss that moves the dark concrete spaces, or the force of the images that actuates the power of the sound. Opera has been recycling myths since forever. Reaching for a myth this time round, it passes it through the complicated machinery of its aesthetics: the aesthetics of sublimity and splendour in which an even stronger mark is left by a red blood stain. Which is like an ill fate.