One of my favourite opera's is Strauss' Electra.  I have heard several
versions but am in a quandry re which one to buy:

1.  Mitropolous/VPO/Bork and others.  Live 1957.  Orfeo.  Searing
conducting and excellent singing.  Perspectives can shift strangely in
this old mono recording.  Lots of atmosphere and the conducting in the
final scene is very special.  A dark propulsive reading.

2.  Sinopoli/VPO/Marc and others.  A UK critic described this as a "weird
recording of a weird opera" which goes part of the way to explaining why
I liked what I heard.  Marc's voice is very beautiful and she moulds vocal
lines thrillingly (I am a fan of this singer).  Sinopoli's conducting is a
mixture of the imaginative and neurotic.  Sound is again a problem - seems
to be tilted toward the left speaker (or is it just my old player?)

3.  Bohm/VPO (again!) /Rysanek and others (1980,video) Absolutely
brilliant staging.  Camerawork + lighting as in an old horror film.
Electra scratches in the mud and gets drenched with rain.  The scene
where she confronts her decadant mother (Astrid Varnay no less)following
the orgy/human sacrifice scene is almost laughingly OTT.  The setting
looks like an old war zone and the palace is an abstract aluminium ediface
(drenched with blood by the end).  Rysanek's acting is superb - try her
misplaced elation in the final scene where she really goes over the edge
and, after dancing down the plinth of her father's statue, she shudders and
dies.  VPO is placed too backwardly, undermining the urgency and drama of
Bohm's conducting.

If you had to take an Electra to your desert island, which one who it be?

David Harbin
Nottingham, UK.
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