Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's first opera together, Elektra, closes the Royal Opera's season in Christof Loy's production.
Christof Loy’s production of Elektra closes the Royal Opera’s season at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden from Monday 12 July 2027. It was the first opera Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal wrote together.
Hofmannsthal took the story from Sophocles and narrowed it to one woman. Elektra waits for her brother to come home and kill their mother. When it finally happens, she dances until she drops dead.
The score runs as one continuous act for an orchestra of over a hundred, and the title role is one of the hardest in the repertoire. The opera opened in Dresden in 1909.
Strauss turned to waltzes two years later in Der Rosenkavalier. The pair wrote five more operas together before Hofmannsthal’s death in 1929.
Thomas Beecham conducted the UK premiere in London in 1910, within a year of the Dresden opening.
The run ends on Saturday 24 July, the day Madama Butterfly also closes, and the two operas alternate in the house for a fortnight. They set two women side by side: one destroyed by patience, the other by the refusal of it.