This is a sonically handsome, beautifully and excitingly played Elektra, filled with genuine drama (it was taped live and benefits from the stage ambience), elegantly presented with full texts and translations and fine accompanying essays. Its greatest draw undoubtedly will be Leonie Rysanek, whose voice (and dramatic instincts) was still entirely intact (at least for the mezzo role of Klytemnestra) in 1995; indeed, in a competitive marketplace, with Varnay, Resnik, Madeira, and others in the role, Rysanek shines as one of the most musical–and tormented–of all Klytemnestras. Elsewhere the casting is good but flawed. Luana DeVol is an exciting Chrysothemis, and she has all the notes and plenty of temperament; but the voice is not particularly appealing or memorable and she hardly erases memories of, well, any number of other well-known sopranos in the role.
Hildegard Behrens, recently (at the time) back from one of her many vocal crises, manages Elektra’s music valiantly and she’s spectacularly vivid. But on some very important levels the voice is in trouble: for instance, register breaks give us a chest voice utterly different and disconnected from the top. While she gains stability as the exciting performance moves toward its wild close, we still yearn for Nilsson’s security, Borkh’s beauty, or Varnay’s unique combination of both. The men are quite good, though Wolfgang Schoene’s gruffness as Orest seems more vocal than interpretive. Friedemann Layer has turned his Montpelier forces into a world-class ensemble; this must have been the event of the ’95 season, or Montpelier is one of the great undiscovered festival-level companies in the world. In short, if you own other Elektras that satisfy you, and unless you are a Rysanek completist, this set, thrilling as it is, won’t be necessary. However, newcomers to the opera definitely could do worse.
