DVD 1:
For this 1981 film of Richard Strauss's expressionist masterpiece, director G?tz Friedrich collaborated with the composer's disciple Karl B?hm, who recorded the soundtrack with the Vienna Philharmonic only month before his death - "music making of grandeur, ecstasy and precision" wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In her performance of the punishing title role, Leonie Rysanek "surmounted the score's superhuman demands with an interpretive achievement that crowns her career" (Daily Telegraph). Astrid Varnay, once a great Electra herself, presents here a potent rendition of Clytemnestra. As The New York Times noted in describing this "powerful moving Elektra", Friedrich and set designer Josef Svoboda have conjured up "distinctive images as memorably vivid as they are harsh".
DVD 2:
"Ob ich die Musik nicht hore? Sie kommt doch aus mir" - Documentary / Making of Elektra
For this 1981 film of Richard Strauss's expressionist masterpiece, director G?tz Friedrich collaborated with the composer's disciple Karl B?hm, who recorded the soundtrack with the Vienna Philharmonic only month before his death - "music making of grandeur, ecstasy and precision" wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In her performance of the punishing title role, Leonie Rysanek "surmounted the score's superhuman demands with an interpretive achievement that crowns her career" (Daily Telegraph). Astrid Varnay, once a great Electra herself, presents here a potent rendition of Clytemnestra. As The New York Times noted in describing this "powerful moving Elektra", Friedrich and set designer Josef Svoboda have conjured up "distinctive images as memorably vivid as they are harsh".
DVD 2:
"Ob ich die Musik nicht hore? Sie kommt doch aus mir" - Documentary / Making of Elektra
