Richard Strauss's Elektra runs on the Main Stage at Covent Garden from 12 to 24 July 2027, in Christof Loy's production.
Elektra was the first thing Strauss and Hofmannsthal made together, and it is the most extreme score either of them attempted: one act, an hour and three quarters without an interval, an orchestra of over a hundred, and a harmonic language that goes as far as anything written before the war. It opened in Dresden in 1909. Strauss never went that far again — Der Rosenkavalier, two years later, is waltzes.
Hofmannsthal took Sophocles and narrowed it to one woman. Elektra waits for her brother to come home and kill their mother, has waited years, and has organised her whole self around the waiting. When it finally happens she dances until she drops dead. The role is one of the hardest in the repertoire and the singers who can do it are counted on one hand at any given time. The two of them went on to write five more operas together, and Hofmannsthal’s death in 1929 ended the most productive partnership in the form since Verdi and Boito.
Christof Loy directs it on the Main Stage at Covent Garden from Monday 12 to Saturday 24 July 2027. It closes the Royal Opera’s season on the same day as Madama Butterfly, the two alternating in the house for a fortnight — which means the year ends with a woman destroyed by patience and a woman destroyed by the refusal of it.