Orestes1.0148_StraussJuettner

Orestes1.0148_StraussJuettner

Felix Jüttner, "Die 'elektrische' Hinrichtung (The Electric Execution)", 1909, satiric/critcal caricature in Die Lustigen Blättern after the premier of R. Strauss' Elektra

Strauss' dissonant op. 58 premiered in Dresden's Hofoper 25 Jan 1909. The libretto is by H. von Hoffmansthal's tragedy in verse, after Sophocles, first performed in 1903.

See E.M. Butler, "Hofmannsthal's 'Elektra', a Graeco-Freudian Myth," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 2 (1938): 164 - 75.

YouTube videos uploaded by Washington National Opera offers a variety of clips featuring Susan Bullock as Elektra. An Opera News review of Bullock's 2009 performance at the Met. Click links above.

For a short clip of one especially dissonant aria, Chrysothemis singing "Es muß etwas geschehen sein!" ("Something must have happened"), which she sings after hearing Clytemnestra's screams from inside the house, performed by the Bayerische Rundfunk Orchestra and Choir (EMI).

Caricature of a conductor playing a trumpet, directing a tortured figure and miniature soldiers in a cage

Richard Strauss' premier of Elektra was acknowledged by Felix Jüttner's satirical cartoon. Strauss' opera is based upon Freudian reading of Sophocles as transmitted by Hugo von Hoffmansthal. The cartoon's title and gist play on the pun associating execution in the electric chair and the excruciating musical character of the new opera. Strauss brought dissonant musicality to the story of the matricide. Macfarlane calls this cartoon the "electracution." Juettner's narrative gain here is the personification of that musical dissonance that Strauss created. In turn, Strauss' gain was related to rendering in music the horrors of matricide (spiced by incestuous fondess of Electra for her father).

The satirist depicts a mild-mannered Strauss performing a musical execution. The composer holds the score of Elektra in his hand. The image of an electrocuted victim comes forth from the musical instrument Strauss plays. The contraption where the suffering happens is an electric chair made of musical instruments. The gruesome depicition shows the man's body in mortal contortions as the musical riffs jolt into the surroundings.

A staid audience seems unbothered, certainly unmoved, by the horrifying scene before them.