CHOICE CUTS Part Four: To keep or not the abridgements typically made in Elektra

Continuing my thoughts from July on the cuts traditionally made to Elektra and why or why not I’m retaining them in this reduced orchestra edition.

In the descriptions below, the numerical designations indicate rehearsal number / measure number after the said rehearsal number.

59a/1 - 68a/1: The first section of a sustained scene in which Elektra attempts to persuade her sister to join her in committing the murders. Over the years I’ve come to consider this cut musically ill-advised: on an architectonic level, Strauss knows what he’s doing here. The musical build up and the dramatic impetus are well integrated, and the final arrival at Chrysothemis’ heroic, bucolic Eb major theme at 68a has so much more impact and makes much more sense with this section retained, whereas the traditional cut always strikes me as mangled and ill-sutured. So I’m retaining it in my edition.

As a reinforcement for this retention, here's another scrolling score teaser from my edition of this passage:

89a/1 - 102a/1 and 104a/1 - 108/a: Elektra continues to persuade her sister to aid her in the murders. In both cases, see point 2 above. Strauss has again built up a musical and dramatic tension that these extended sections counteract.

166a/7 - 171/a: Dramatically, this is a really interesting passages in which Elektra drops some hints about why for so many years she has obsessively clung to hatred and revenge and the memory of her father. I include the text of the entire section below, from the end of of Elektra’s recognition “aria” to the beginning of her “duet” with Orestes, with the passage traditionally cut in italics:

Nein, du sollst mich nicht umarmen! Tritt weg, ich schäme mich vor dir. Ich weiss nicht, wie du mich ansiehst. Ich bin nur mehr der Leichnam deiner Schwester, mein armes Kind. Ich weiss, es schaudert dich vor mir. Und war doch eines Königs Tochter! Ich glaube, ich war schön: wenn ich die Lampe ausblies vor meinem Spiegel, fühlt ich es mit keuschem Schauer. Ich fühlt' es, wie der dünne Strahl des Mondes in meines Körpers weisser Nacktheit badete so wie in einem Weiher, und mein Haar war solches Haar, vor dem die Männer zittern, dies Haar, versträhnt, beschmutzt, erniedrigt, verstehst du's, Bruder? Ich habe alles, was ich war, hingeben müssen. Meine Scham hab' ich geopfert, die Scham, die süsser als Alles ist, die Scham, die wie der Silberdunst, der milchige des Monds, um jedes Weib herum ist und das Grässliche von ihr und ihrer Seele weghält, verstehst du's, Bruder! Diese süssen Schauder hab' ich dem Vater opfern müssen. Meinst du, wenn ich an meinem Leib mich freute, drangen seine Seufzer, drang nicht sein Stöhnen an mein Bette? Eifersüchtig sind die Toten: und er schickte mir den Hass, den hohläugigen Hass als Bräutigam. So bin ich eine Prophetin immerfort gewesen und habe nichts hervorgebracht aus mir und meinem Leib als Flüche und Verzweiflung. Was schaust du ängstlich um dich? sprich zu mir! sprich doch! Du zitterst ja am ganzen Leib!

No, you mustn’t embrace me! Keep away, I’m ashamed in front of you. I don’t know how you can stand to look at me. I’m nothing more than the corpse of your sister, my poor child. I know… it horrifies you to look at me, who was once the daughter of a king! I think, I was pretty: when I blew out the lamp at my mirror, I felt it with chaste trembling. I felt it like the thin gleam of the moon bathing in my body’s white nakedness, as if in a censor, and my hair was such hair, before which men tremble, this hair, bedraggled, filthy, disgusting, do you understand, brother? I have had to sacrifice everything. I’ve sacrificed my modesty, that modesty sweeter than anything, that modesty that surrounds every woman like the silver radiance of the milky moon and protects her and her soul from horror, do you understand, brother? That sweet modesty had to be sacrificed to Father. Don’t you think, when I delighted in my body, his sighs, his moans didn’t invade my bed? Jealous are the dead, and he bequeathed me Hate, hollow-eyed Hate for a bridegroom. Thus I am relegated to being a prophetess, and my body has experienced nothing more than curses and despair. Why do you look around so nervously? Speak to me!  Speak! Your whole body is trembling!

The insinuation of a more than usually intimate father / daughter relationship is pretty clear, and does much to explain both Elektra’s traumatized mental state and in particular her unshakeable quest for vengeance on her father’s behalf.

The biggest problem with this section is its questionable placement in the play. One wonders why Hofmannsthal chose to hold this revelation - if that’s what it is - to so late in the drama. The murders are impending, the audience is fidgeting, in the case of the opera the heroine has just been allotted her first extended piece of lyricism which doesn’t necessarily benefit from greater extension… It’s a debatable choice of dramatic plotting. Still, the impact on Elektra’s character and the entire drama is significant enough - and the section itself short enough - that I’m retaining it in my edition.

Should the circumstances and time ever permit, I may go back and reinstate the sections that I’m planning to omit.