I compared last night's Berkeley "Libation Bearers" and the Hoffmansthal
libretto for "Electra," not thinking of the Sophocles version and not
realizing that Hoffmansthal wrote the play before shaping the libretto
for Strauss.  Thanks to the Web, not-thinking and not-realizing are easily
remedied, as you may see below, in kind messages by Helen Elsom, and Steven
Chung.  (Please note that these messages, forwarded with permission, are
just casual pieces of correspondence, nowhere near the format and
completeness these fine scholarly friends would employ otherwise...:)

   Hoffmansthal's Elektra is based very closely on Sophocles' Elektra
   play, which is often regarded as including more or less explicit digs
   at the apparent absurdities of Aeschylus'.

   Euripides' Electra is yet another treatment of the same story.
   Comparing the three is a common topic for undergraduate papers.

[That'll be my next project...:) Janos]

   Aeschylus is ritualistic, still exploring the first principles of
   civic drama (hence the Eumenides, which is a forensic argument all
   about Athens); think Monteverdi's Orfeo.  Sophocles develops character
   within a cultural and political framework; think Mozart/Da Ponte.
   Euripides is interested in extreme states, particularly madness and
   degradation; think verismo.

   Strauss and Hoffmansthal were probably interested in Sophocles'
   Electra less for any parallels with Mozart/Da Ponte than because of
   the boom in bourgeois classical studies in the latter part of the
   nineteenth century.  (Jebb's English translations of Sophocles and
   Plato, widely available on the web, are part of the same business.)
   I think they got to Electra before Freud did.  Regards, Helen

------

   Hoffmansthal's Elektra is not after Aeschylus at all, but a treatment
   of the same myth by Sophocles.  Unfortunately, as much as I admire
   Hoffmansthal, I think his changes to Sophocles are for the worse.
   The explicit sexualizing of the conflicts and the sisters' deprivation
   makes for more of a top-to-bottom visceral effect, but--with Strauss'
   unrestrained palette--it turns the black and white starkness of
   Sophocles into something a bit purple and less solid.

   Unfortunately, while the translations of Sophocles' Elektra can give
   an idea of how he structures the action, but none do justice to the
   incredible poetry of the language.  Sophocles uses fairly plain
   language in the non-choral bits, particularly compared to the rather
   baroque Aeschylus, but with a concentration and passion simply
   unequalled until...  well, never, I would say.  But the translations
   want to muck around with 'poetic' phrasing and this and that...

   I often wish Strauss had written Elektra after Ariadne, in a similar
   manner if on a larger scale.

   (ps--The Libation Bearers doesn't stand on its own as well as Elektra
   [either one] because Aeschylus still viewed the tragic trilogy as a
   single unit.  As a whole, it's the creation-myth of Athens, not unlike
   how Der Rosenkavalier is the creation-myth of Vienna...  But complaining
   about a lack of big emotional climaxes in this piece is a bit like
   making that complaint about Das Rheingold...)

   Elektra was a freestanding play by Hoffmansthal (well, after Sophocles,
   as he noted) before Strauss saw it and got the idea of setting it to
   music...

   The original Sophocles has had a number of incredibly effective
   productions in modern times, most notably a London one in the early
   '90s starring Fiona Shaw (and directed by Deborah Warner).  Shaw said
   that the role was simply the hardest thing she'd ever done because
   it's profoundly and overwhelmingly direct: you can't use crutches
   of any sort; your psyche is simply on display in an almost-raw state.

   I could go on about the difficulty of making Greek tragedy work in
   modern productions with modern actors, but I won't...  S.

Janos Gereben/SF, CA
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