Metropolitan Opera Archives

Strength of casting, in terms of vocal power, was evident in the Metropolitan Opera's revival of "Elektra" (which I saw on December 5). It included a Tristan (Richard Cassilly as Aegisthus), an Isolde (Johanna Meier as Chrysothemis) and a Wotan (Simon Estes as Orestes). Yet, even in the spaces of the Met, vocal power is not everything, and this performance never exhibited that cumulative force that is a great "Elektra." In part this was owing to the expansive, lyric conducting of James Levine (substituting for an indisposed Klaus Tennstedt), which caused the opera to sag rather than soar, and in part it was owing to the stage-ordering of Paul Mills, which was similarly without tension. But a good deal of the problem lay in the lack of temperament of the evening's Elektra, Ute Vinzing. She has a strong, piercing soprano with little colour but a good ability to project, yet she was miscast as the daemonic figure of revenge simply because she could never suggest the daemonism or the urgency. She seemed a lady next door, looking for a lost garden tool, and her final dance of ecstasy would not have embarrassed a bishop.

Surrounding her, Miss Meier's declamatory rather than lyric Chrysothemis needed more vulnerability (though in recompense her voice does ride the orchestral climaxes), and Mr. Estes's Orestes was woodenly delivered, if in a far stronger voice than is usually heard in the role. Of the three, Mr. Cassilly was the only one who projected character as well as voice, and in his short scene he almost nudged Miss Vinzing into responsive acting.

Much anticipation attached to Christa Ludwig's Klytemnestra, for she is a favourite with Met audiences and with the management. Her scene was a marvel of vocal shading and expressivity, well partnered by Levine, who kept the orchestra at chamber level so that her voice could be heard. Yet finally this was not the kind of risk-taking performance that once defined her. One felt she was husbanding rather than scattering her manifold talents, and the edge of caution that invested her singing extended to the whole of the evening, to its detriment.

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