Richard Strauss - Elektra [2 DVDs] (1981) - DVD

"Interpreters"
Klytämnestra - Astrid Varnay
Elektra - Leonie Rysanek
Chrysothemis - Catarina Ligendza
Aegisth - Hans Beirer
Orest - Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Der Pfleger der Orest - Josef Greindl
Ein junger Diener - Christopher Doig
Ein alter Diener - Kurt Böhme
Agamemnon - Rolf Boysen

Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor
Wiener Philharmoniker
Conductor: Karl Böhm
Directed by Götz Friedrich

"Elektra"
For this 1981 film of Richard Strauss's expressionist masterpiece, director Götz Friedrich collaborated with the composer's disciple Karl Böhm, who recorded the soundtrack with the Vienna Philharmonic only month before his death - "music making of grandeur, ecstasy and precision" wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In her performance of the punishing title role, Leonie Rysanek "surmounted the score's superhuman demands with an interpretive achievement that crowns her career" (Daily Telegraph). Astrid Varnay, once a great Electra herself, presents here a potent rendition of Clytemnestra. As The New York Times noted in describing this "powerful moving Elektra", Friedrich and set designer Josef Svoboda have conjured up "distinctive images as memorably vivid as they are harsh".