Hugo Shirley

Leipzig and Dresden are both staging Elektra. Which city wins?

A revival of Peter Konwitschny's 2005 production trumps the austere, uninvolving dourness of Barbara Frey's new version

Evelyn Herlitzius as Elektra Photo: Matthias Creutziger
Yet more performances of Elektra, Richard Strauss’s setting of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s ramped-up, neurosis-riddled 1903 reworking of Sophocles, are unlikely to force any anniversary-year reassessments of the composer. But the piece’s current ubiquity does reflect the fact that we’re now relatively well off for singers equipped to tackle the fearsome title role.

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