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Early on in the opera, the civilized rulers are seen to act savagely. A black girl is brutally whipped for defending Elektra. None of the rulers, nor the elite of the court, is black, so Friedrich gives us some additional political commentary, reinforcing the idea of imperial oppression and Elektra as freedom-fighter. The contemporary audience must identify Elektra with all those anti-imperialists in Ireland and Palestine who sacrifice themselves for freedom.22 |
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In Friedrich's version, Elektra prays at Agamemnon's tomb. Agamemnon's statue is broken, and she carries his stone head as she executes a dizzying dance, with its triple rhythms an anticipation of her final frenetic waltz (Musical Example C). She thrusts the head between her legs, leaving no doubt about her incestuous devotion. Agamemnon appears as a ghost when she sings; when she first sees Agamemnon he has no wound, but the next time he appears with a bloody gash in his forehead, after Friedrich visually has reenacted his death at Klytemnestra's hands, a vivid reminiscence of Sophokles' play (see El. 811, 9299, etc.). |
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Hofmannsthal's Elektra talks of blood sacrifices to her father: one hundred throats to be cut, and horses and dogs included in the sacrifice. We see her as her mother's heir: Sophokles' Klytemnestra had a monthly sacrifice of sheep to celebrate the day she slew Agamemnon (El. 277281). Hofmannsthal shows us instead Elektra's fantasy of victims slaughtered to honor her father, and then the orgy of blood that Klytemnestra performs to quell her dreams. |
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Hofmannsthal's Elektra calls Chrysothemis "the daughter of my mother, the daughter of Klytemnestra," varying the comment by Sophokles' Elektra that it is frightful that she, the daughter of such a father, would forget him and concern herself only with her mother, called disparagingly "she who bore you" (El. 342). Sophokles has invented Chrysothemis to contrast with the more determined sister: the heroic and the noble vs. the one who "makes do.'' We appreciate Elektra's defiance all the more by seeing Chrysothemis' compromises. |
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In both the play and the opera, Chrysothemis dreams of a life including marriage and children. This leads to her endorsement by many later commentators as the "sane" character by comparison with Elektra; they say she is in the "right," and even the mouthpiece of Sophokles.23 I would not do Sophokles such a disservice. Elektra sneers at what she considers ignoble concerns, but this heroism can also be alienating. We remember what |
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22 See Said (1993), who widens the notion of imperialism and brilliantly delineates the link of culture with the tools the conquerors use to dominate. |
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23 "Sophoclean scholars have, almost to a man, concluded that Chrysothemis, though weak, is fundamentally right." Whitman (1951) 156. I think Whitman's comment is exaggerated. Chrysothemis is conventional, and advocates what is safe for the status quo, but hardly "right" in a Platonic sense. |
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