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 [log in to unmask]