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Scene from Electra - Eva Revides as Electra. (Photo: Jürgen Frahm)
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Like Medea, Sophocles’ Electra is a tragedy in which an apparently helpless heroine triumphs over the forces who oppress her. And like Medea, Electra is also the implacable instrument of revenge. As the composer stated in his notes for the first production, Electra is the Eklekti, literally, “the one chosen,” in this case by the Laws of Universal Harmony. Sophocles’ chorus provide her keys to her character. She is, above all, alone.
Eternally lamenting her father, she is at the same time brave and disdainful of death. Her fate may be black, but she will eventually be considered wise and virtuous for having kept the laws of nature and respected Zeus. Her qualities are the eternal qualities of the one who dares, one is capable of finding a way of communicating with the universal laws of harmony. In this version of the tragedy the chorus, for Theodorakis, represent the law of nature: “its vision, mind, soul and voice” (1995b).
“Since the play covers whole gamut of human feelings,” the composer stated, “the music tries to project this in its own way. Basically it is the music of the Greeks: ancient Greek melos supported by harmonia. The highest point of this notion of harmonia is melos, that is the song-essence of the tragic, the excess that characterized the Bacchanalia.” (1995b) Of the trilogy of operas, Electra is probably the most dramatic and the most difficult. At its best it is a tour de force of rhythmic tension and poignant lyricism, but it is not a work that courts a popular audience, either Greek or non-Greek. How, then, does it fulfil the composer’s vision of projecting the gamut of human emotions and at the same time representing the universal and eternal laws of harmony and of nature? What musical language is the composer speaking when he addresses an international audience of opera-goers?
I will limit myself to commenting on a few elements of Theodorakis’s Electra which illustrate, I think, his approach to the composition. Unlike his Medea, based on his own translation of Euripides, and his Antigone, which is a collage derived from Euripides’ Phoenician Women, Aeschylus’s Seven Against Thebes, and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, Theodorakis used a libretto by Spyros Evangelatos based on the simple modern Greek translation of Sophocles’ original by K. Yorgousopoulos for his Electra. The libretto stays close to the original with some inevitable cuts in choruses. The advantage of using a straightforward adaptation of the play is that for an audience familiar with Sophocles’ original, there are few distractions and we are free to concentrate on the relation between the known text and its new musical setting.
For Theodorakis, the role of the chorus is, as in Sophocles, central, poetic and didactic. This leads the composer to a technique he employs in all three operas, i.e. to simplify the harmonic structure of the choral sections and, where it is appropriate, to divide the chorus into male and female voices. Thus in the first chorus of the opera (in the original tragedy the exchange between Electra and the chorus is the longest lyric passage in the extant plays of Sophocles) Theodorakis gives the women’s chorus a serene melody in Bb major with a gently rocking 6/8 rhythm that suits their attempt to calm Electra’s fierce grief. Singing in unison the women are joined by the men; they abandon calm reassurance as they retell the murder of Agamemnon in a rhythmically and harmonically dramatic passage, but even here sopranos and tenors sing in unison, as do the altos and basses, making it possible for us to hear the words of chorus clearly.
Theodorakis has always derived his melodic inspiration from poetic texts. For Electra, however, he has drawn not only on Sophocles’ text for inspiration but on his own existing repertoire of melodic material, including the themes from the score he composed for Michael Caccoyiannis’s film Electra, and from his song cycles Ta Prosopa tou iliou (Faces of the Sun ) and Traghoudia tou agona (Songs of Struggle). This self reference is not generally of a symbolic character, demanding a Greek audience draw associations with an earlier composition. Rather the composer has used melodies he is especially attached to and which suit his purpose.
From the opening scene, even before Electra’s disembodied voice floats out from the palace, Mycenae is established, musically, as a sacred site. Shimmering chords over a solemn rhythmic base stress the numinous character of the drama we are about to witness. Orestes informs us, in his opening aria, that he will make offerings at his father’s tomb. Then he offers a prayer to the gods of his ancestral home. In her initial aria (“O Pure Light...”) Electra, too, will offer a prayer. In her case, the aria is preceded by an orchestral interlude that prepares the aria by its lyric invocation of dawn. Here the composer deliberately stresses what for him is the central contrast of the drama, that between the cosmic harmony of nature, which Electra represents, and the disharmony within the palace.
The prayer to light is almost immediately followed by an invocation to the gods of the dark realm of the underworld, to Hades and Persephone, to Hermes, who links both worlds, and to the Furies, daughters of night and the instigators of revenge. Unexpected, to the non-Greek ear, is the gently rocking rhythm of this aria, which the chorus echoes. Clearly it is a traditional Greek folk melody; it also happens to be a lament for the dead, and not only a lament but one particular to the Mani, the central prong of the Peloponnese, and the only part of Greece where blood feuds were common until the middle of the 20th century. [viii] To the trained Greek ear, the lyricism of the aria is tainted by death.
In its first utterance, the chorus is unequivocal in its support of Electra. After echoing her aria, the full chorus tells her to bear up and be strong. (vasta yera, kori mou ...). Here a return to the solemn 12/8 rhythm of the opening scene reminds us that the chorus are equally involved in the sacred task of restoring lost harmony to the kingdom. Electra’s response ( “I lived alone without hope ”) is heard over the orchestra’s return to the pentatonic motif of Mycenae before the chorus assumes the voice of lament again and (bar 407ff) we relive the terrible homecoming of Agamemnon, the orchestra supplying the vicious blows of the axe.
Following Electra’s next invocation, this time addressed to Zeus, the chorus begins to express their doubts about Electra’s implacable desire for revenge. Fear and agitation are expressed in an orchestral prelude to their statement, “Where the mighty rule, provoke no quarrels!” Here we have a demonstration of a technique familiar from Medea and common to the whole trilogy of operas. Passages in rapid triple meter are used to signal tension and become the agitated accompaniment of mental turbulence or dramatic action.
Scene five is marks the appearance of Chrysothemis and consists largely of an interchange between the two sisters. Her opening aria emphasizes Chrysothemis’s emotional turmoil. She is tired of the constant quarrel with her sister and immediately launches into an attack. Again, triplets accompany the interchange between the two sisters until, at a point of unbearable tension, the chorus intervenes, ostensibly to calm the sisters’ anger. However, as the musical language makes clear, with its fortissimo dotted rhythms, the chorus is anything but a calming influence; indeed the conflict accelerates, over the waves of the raging orchestra now playing an extension of the pattern of triplets into groups of five against six.
At the height of the conflict between the two sisters, Electra begs her sister to throw away the offerings her mother has instructed her to place on their father’s tomb. At this climactic point we have the most characteristic melodic, rhythmic and orchestration of the opera. A throbbing, dance-like rhythm supports Electra’s fiercely determined outburst, in which Greek consonants are enunciated like rapid bursts of machine-gun fire. The outburst over, tension gradually subsides and is replaced by a limpid D major aria. The heavenly calm is brief. The chorus intervenes preparing us for the dramatic “Yes” of Chrysothemis who has been won over by her sister.
In the opening chorus of the sixth scene of the opera ( “If I am not a distracted seer”) Theodorakis stresses the dual aspects of the chorus’s nature. On the one hand they represent Mycenae itself, a city steeped in blood. The tam-tam, here, becomes a primordial herald of death. In their lyric aspect, on the other hand, the chorus is also a reminder of the beauty of the Greek landscape, a loveliness that makes death more poignant. Their role here is to comment on the dream and what it portends, preparing the way for Clytemnestra’s entry. In his notes for the first production of the opera, Theodorakis wrote that both Clytemnestra’s voice and the music itself should appear to come out of the earth (1995b). The conflict between Electra and Clytemnestra is the second and most deadly of the tragedy. It is written in what Theodorakis calls a peculiar sort of Byzantine recitative, marked by the consonances between
Electra’s A minor and Clytemnestra’s F minor, which must fall with sharp attack, according to the composer’s notes... “like crystalline waterfalls of sound.” (1995b).
Following the cold, objective tone of the recitative comes another folk-like section in 7/8 that undelines a shift to a more subjective mood for Electra’s ironic : “ Or do you prefer to say that your daughter avenges herself?” Again the lyric break is brief and issues in another musical and rhetorical crescendo until Clytemnestra, unable to continue the exchange, demands to be allowed to make her sacrifice at the tomb. As the Queen invokes the gods, music becomes the bridge between heaven and earth. “Music,” as the composer noted, “is the mediator of Universal Harmony, and so leads us to the understanding of the human microcosm” (1995b). This lofty view of the role of music provides us with the key understanding the scene that follows in which Clytemnestra addresses Apollo: “Now, Apollo Protector, hear my words!” The music must carry the Queen and us out of the darkness and into the center of universal harmony. This is an aria intended to express awe and we are to imagine the kneeling Clytemnestra not hedging her bets in fear, but utterly lost in prayer.
The scene that follows is in many respects the pivotal scene of Sophocles’ tragedy. The tutor’s account of the death of Orestes in a chariot race is a huge lie, but one he must tell with absolute conviction. Everything hangs on his ability as an actor and he paints an unforgettably vivid picture of the race. Theodorakis has used a combination of Greek dance rhythms here to create a dance macabre which verges, at times, on the jubilant. It is, in Theodorakis’s words, “as if [the tutor] himself is drawn into the intoxication of the dance rhythm...In a way he too dances as he lets his fantasy run wild” (1995b). Here music achieves what words alone cannot. The horses gallop in a frenzy under the tutor’s narration while the chorus’s exclamations are heard in terrifying gasps above both.
Everything comes to a halt before the fictional bloodied body of Orestes. The chorus joins in the fiction, lamenting the dead hero with the crowd of spectators. They sing a hymn of praise drawn from a traditional Cretan heroic song, a rizitiko. Here it is not lost on a Greek audience that such songs are associated with rebellion, that such deaths provoke vengeance. The lie has been told for Clytemnestra’s benefit, and must come as a relief, but relief at a terrible price. This is a moment of supreme bitterness in a bitter play. Theodorakis describes the melody he uses here as, “mauve on a black background” (1995b). As she slowly emerges from her moment of grief the conflict between mother daughter escalates again. They stalk one another in fury while the music washes angrily around them in the familiar pattern of rapid triplets.
The first act of the opera ends with a scene in which Electra and the chorus lament the dead Orestes in a calm lyric that slowly evolves into a solemn but ominous chant over an deep ostinuto bass. Again there is a steady rise in tension that erupts into a musical storm with the chorus and Electra spitting out their tumult of words over a rhythmic bass that we will hear again in the finale of the opera.
Act two begins with another dawn scene, its central motif echoing the opening of the opera. The contrast between the jubilation of Chrysothemis, as she tells her sister of her suspicions that Orestes has returned, and the absolute despair of Electra, who is convinced her brother is dead, is pointed up here by the pitch of their voices, with Chrysothemis’s clear soprano dancing above her sister’s mezzo. The chorus joins the two sisters, mourning the death of Orestes in a rocking, 6/8 rhythm that we have now began to associate with such laments. Swiftly, however, and with renewed fury, Electra’s thoughts turn back to the question of revenge. The orchestra marks the rising tension, moving again into its pattern of triplets as Electra sings: “Dare to do what I advise you...” (bars 2068-2075).
Again, the sisters clash, as Chrysothemis steps back from her brief mood of daring. The orchestration grows thicker as the dialogue progresses, triplets galloping as the conflict escalates until Electra dismisses her sister in disgust. Here there is a pause in the action as the chorus begins its most important commentary on the drama and on Electra’s decision.
“Since we see how the birds in the sky look after the parents who raised them.” Electra, who has lamented her dead father endlessly and now laments her brother, will win a doubly valuable reputation for wisdom and virtue. The chorus claim that Electra has surrendered to her misery in order to preserve the laws of nature and to honor Zeus. Of this they sing in a semi-recitative over the majestic rhythm associated with the opera’s most solemn moments.
It is Pylades, rather than Orestes, who dominates the first part of the following scene. Trying to maintain his character as a stranger, Orestes merely asks for information and maintains a neutral recitative. Pylades, in contrast, sings a new folk-like melody, bright and triumphant. This is a transcendent moment, in Theodorakis’s own conception, where music overcomes pain, reaching up to be united with the center of universal harmony. As Orestes takes pity on Electra and persuades Pylades to give her the urn supposedly containing his own ashes, she sings another lyrical melody, this time one tinged by the memories of her childhood when she cradled the living child Orestes. Slowly, as her moment of peaceful reflection passes, the orchestra signals her mounting tension with its triplets against which rapid splashes of chords rise and fall until another climax is reached where, in a sudden stillness, Electra realizes the totality of her loss: “Our father gone, and I am dead too!”
As she sings a lament over the ashes of her brother, Electra appears suddenly fragile, perhaps half crazy. The chorus enfolds her, and then it is Orestes’ turn to appear lost. He is nervous, stunned, uncertain how to behave. As he tells his sister to put down the urn and listen to him, the rhythm changes again, with threes against fours, then in rapid clusters of six until the recognition scene breaks the tension again with a solemn adagio begun by the brother and sister, in which Pylades and the chorus join. It is not until the following scene that Orestes appears in his character of mature hero. His semi-recitative is a call to action, appropriately rhythmically controlled and measured, despite the asymmetric time signatures associated with wilder, passages of the opera. The dance-like rhythm here marks the beginning of the relentless gallop of death that will ride down its victims mercilessly to the end of the opera. From now on the lyrical interludes will be brief, the tension maintained breathlessly to the end. One such lull accompanies Electra’s recognition of the tutor, where a new galloping rhythm of 8 supports the happy reunion of Electra with the elderly servant. Musically, this second recognition is one of the crowning moments of the opera. The composer claims that it represents the affirmation of his theory of the relationship between the ancient traghodia and traghoudi. (1995b). For Greeks familiar with in the composer’s work, it is also a moment of recognition. In the dark heritage of Electra there are few joys but this meeting with the old servant is an affirmation of trust. As we come upon a fragment from the lovely cycle of songs that Theodorakis wrote for another play, Brendan Behan’s The Hostage, those of us who are familiar with Theodorakis’s work also embrace an old friend, one of those melodies that made him a figure of myth. It is from a song whose opening words are especially poignant here: “No-one here takes the place of a mother..”
Taking up her own earlier theme in her dialogue with the chorus, Electra has dropped, for a moment, her anger and put mourning aside. This time it is Orestes’ turn to urge the action forward, but first a prayer must be offered to Apollo. The parallel between this and the sacred atmosphere of the opening scene with its series of invocations is underlined by a brief return to the Mycenae theme. The musical language of the opera has already been spoken. We read its signs as the final climax approaches. The orchestra takes on a leading role here as the tension mounts. It is the orchestra that “describes” the murder, with its rushing triplets and bursts of percussion. Electra’s character has changed. She has become a she-wolf in her desire for revenge. The full resources of the orchestra’s brass and strings scream with the terrified mother and baying daughter. The pitch of excitement is so high that no-one can intervene except the chorus, who, with their aria “City and accursed race” sung in a mighty unison, remind us that this is not only a personal tragedy but the fulfillment of an ancient curse. The exchange between the pitiless Electra onstage and her mother, whose voice reaches us from within the palace, also reminds us of Electra’s disembodied voice that opened the tragedy. Roles have been reversed, a death for a death, but the tam-tam goes on beating, reminding us the cycle of revenge has no end.
Surprisingly, the chorus, in the scene that follows, justify the murder at the very moment when Orestes and his companions emerge with bloody hands from the palace. As Aegisthus approaches, in
scene 20, the composer re-establishes an otherworldly atmosphere, invoking the kingdom of nature and of universal harmony, as if in protest against the terrible actions of mortals. This sense of a larger backdrop to the events taking place in the tragedy, achieved through the orchestral writing, lends Aegisthus dignity as he makes his entry, and underlines his complacent, autocratic personality. In contrast, Electra has now to act a part that is foreign to her nature and pretend to see the error of her ways. Their duet is superimposed on the menacing flow of the orchestra which rushes ineluctably on. As Aegisthus demands silence he engages in a last show of authority, exchanging lines of dialogue with the trumpets.
The penultimate scene begins with chorus making their nasal acclamations, in imitation of the Byzantine salutations of the emperor. The orchestral coloring becomes increasingly vivid. Who, exactly, are the chorus saluting? They appear, suddenly, to be crazed dervishes, with nothing to cling to. As the doors to the palace are opened a shocking spectacle is revealed. The son stands holding the body of the mother he has slain, much as a mother holds a child. The tableau is misread by Aegisthus, who thinks he is looking at the body of Orestes and cannot restrain his expression of joy.
The final scene begins in a tumult of disbelief as Aegisthus sees his murdered wife and realizes he is trapped. Orestes and the men drag Aegisthus to the slaughter while Electra joins in the savagery. Briefly her theme returns as she and the chorus revel in the primitive joys of the hunt. Despite the positive final words of the chorus the orchestra continues its wild gallop as if towards an abyss. Has Electra rally taken a new road towards freedom? Theodorakis’ score leaves the question unanswered.
© Gail Holst 2000
References
Foley, Helene. 2000. Unpublished talk on Sophocles’ Electra at New York’s Donnell Library, June 8th.
Hirschon, Renee. 1989. Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus. Oxford: Clarendon Press
Holst, Gail. 1975. Road to Rembetika:: Music of a Greek Sub-culture. Athens: Denise Harvey.
________________1980. Theodorakis: Myth and Politics in Modern Greek Music. Amsterdam: Adolf Hakkert.
Holst-Warhaft, Gail. 1992. Dangerous Voices: Women’s Lament and Greek Literature. London: Routledge.
Koutoulas, Asteris. 1998. O Mousikos Theodorakis: Keimena-Ergografia-Ktritikes. 1937-1996) (Theodorakis the Musician: Articles, Working Notes, Criticism ). Athens: Nea Synora.
McDonald, Marianne.1994. “Katharsis into Modern Opera.” The Journal of Modern Greek Arts, (Spring, 1994: 37-44).
________________1997. “Medea as Politican and Diva: Riding the Dragon into the Future.” In Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy and the Arts, eds., James J. Clauss and Sarah Iles Johnton. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp.297-323.
Rosenberg, Harold. 1977 “The Art World.” New Yorker, 22 August, 83-4.
Seremetakis, C. Nadia. 1991. The Last Word: Women, Death and Divination in Inner Mani. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Theodorakis, Mikis. 1959. “ I mousiki stin arhaia Elliniki traghodia.” (“Music in Ancient Greek Tragedy”). Originally published in Kritiki, 2, 1959, p 78. Reproduced in Theodorakis, 1961, 65-71
________________1960. “To provlima tis mousikis stin arhaia traghodia” (“The problem of Music in Ancient Tragedy”). Originally published in Avyi, 12/4/1960. Reproduced in Theodorakis, 1961, 72-76.
________________1961. Yia tin Elliniki mousiki. (On Greek Music ). Athens: Pleias
________________1966. “To klima pou gennai ta gnisia traghoudhia.” (“The Climate that Produces Genuine Songs”). Interview in Nea Yenia., Jan. 15th.
________________1972. Mousiki yia tis mazes (Music for the masses). Athens: Olkos.
________________1974. To Chreos (The Debt ) (Two volumes.) Athens: Pleias.
________________1991a Unpublished notes on Medea.
________________1991b Unpublished notes on Medea.
________________1995. Author’s interview with Theodorakis, Meiningen, May 5th.
________________1995b Unpublished notes on Electra.
________________1997. Melopoimeni Piisi, Tomos A’ Traghoudia (Poetry Set to Music: Vol.1, Songs) . Athens: Ypsilon.
________________1998. Melopoimeni Piisi, Tomos B’ Symphonica-Metasymphonica-Oratoria (Poetry Set to Music: Vol.2, Symphonic, Metasymphonic, Oratorios. Athens:Ypsilon.
________________1999 Program notes for the premiere of Antigone (October 7th).
Van Steen, Gonda. 2000. Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wagner, Guy. 1995. “Mikis Theodorakis: Myth and Opera.” Tageblatt /Zeitung fir Letzebuerg, 26th April.
Notes
[viii] On the Greek laments and their relation to ancient tragedy, particularly the revenge laments of Mani, see Gail Holst-Warhaft, Dangerous Voices: Women’s Laments and Greek Literature, 1992, p. 40-170. Also on the laments of Mani, see Nadia Seremetakis, The Last Word: Women, Death and Divination in Inner Mani, 1991.
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