"Too much sanity may be madness!" wrote Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes. "And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be."
Which is the problem for the title character in Richard Strauss' "Elektra," a Greek princess who broods Hamlet-like for 10 years on how to avenge the murder of her father, Agamemnon by her mother, Klytämnestra, and her mother's now husband, Aegisth.
Strauss' opera, based on Sophocles' play, is a 110-minute onslaught of sound and fury that can easily swamp both the complex score's musical subtleties and the libretto's nuances of humanity. Seattle Opera adroitly sidesteps both pitfalls in its production, which opened at McCaw Hall Saturday night.
On Saturday, conductor Lawrence Renes and his orchestra maintained the musical torrent without overwhelming either the voices, apart from Aegisth's pleas for help offstage, or the score's lyrical moments. The musicians move fluidly from the dissonance of the opera's horrific actions into the poetry of its tender passages, including Chrysothemis' poignant longing for a normal life with a husband and children and Elektra's joyful reunion with her brother, Orestes. Shocking in its modernity when it premiered in Dresden in 1909, "Elektra" can still startle with what were then innovations of harmony and rhythm, as freshly evidenced in the Seattle Opera production.
Director Chris Alexander and his cast have fashioned a psychological "Elektra" in which the line between sanity and madness is thin. In their Seattle Opera debuts, Janice Baird as Elektra and Rosalind Plowright as Klytämnestra shift as naturally from the rational to the irrational and back again as does the music.
Occasionally, awkward staging briefly interrupted the dramatic tension. Among those instants Baird had to scooch herself into the right position onstage and Chrysothemis, sung by Irmgard Vilsmaier, made an unconvincingly far-too-slow retreat down the stairs.
Nevertheless, Baird and the other sopranos on opening night were powerhouses, dramatically and vocally, clearing even the loudest orchestral moments without a hint of a shriek. With her seething hatred and insanity, Elektra cannot be the heroine the opera needs unless her humanity is also established. Baird and her beautiful voice skillfully bring all of those elements into play, from her frightful loss of reason to her happiness at her brother's return.
Plowright was riveting as the nightmare-beset insomniac Klytämnestra, tormented by her past and fearful of her future. Regal despite a body prematurely aged and twisted over a walking stick by her sins, Plowright's Klytämnestra for all her venom is sympathetic.
The cast included other newcomers to Seattle Opera. Soprano Irmgard Vilsmaier's Chrysothemis was no milquetoast but as strong as Elektra, both as a character and vocally, although with a sweeter quality. Orest is much more than a throwaway role as sung with dignity and warmly rounded tones by bass-baritone Alfred Walker.
Richard Margison, a familiar face at Seattle Opera, was an effective Aegisth. The maids and other supporting characters more than held their own vocally and dramatically.
The massive and forbidding rendition of the palace in Mycenae evokes a sense of trapped doom, particularly under Marcus Doshi's shadow-haunted lighting. Originally designed by Wolfram Skalicki for the Canadian Opera Company, the set was employed in Seattle Opera's 1996 production of "Elektra." My only quibble with Doshi's work was having to strain against the darkness to see facial expressions.
Regardless of a few minor flaws, "Elektra" is one of the best dramatic productions I have seen at Seattle Opera.
Seattle Opera's "Elektra" plays at Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St., through Saturday, Nov. 1. Prices: $25-$165. Tickets/information: 389-7676, www.seattleopera.org.
Freelance writer Maggie Larrick lives in the Seattle area and is the former editor of the News.
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