That ancient Greek tale of the rage for revenge that engulfs the royal house of Agamemnon, following his sacrifice of Iphigenia so that the Greek fleet can sail for Troy, and his murder by his wife own wife Klytemnestra when he returns ten years later, can be and has been explored from the point of view of all the principles, not least Orestes who in the end does the deed of matricide in obedience to his duty to his lost father. But in this vividly dramatic and powerfully intense rendering of the multiple tragedy, Richard Strauss chose as his focus Elektra, tormented by the sight of her father weltering in his own blood in his bath as he dies at his wife's hand. Her screams, her rage, her agony, her passionate determination to avenge the horror, are turned into music of the most sublime intensity by Strauss. In this extraordinary work all the forces of art meet and explode, tearing at the audience throughout; they stumble from the auditorium at the end gasping for air, but richly shrived by the experience, which is Aristotelian in the depth of the catharsis it offers.
       Among an admirable and unimpeachable cast, Susan Bullock cannot help but stand out in virtue of the demands of her role, and the magnificence with which she responds to them. This is opera that requires real stamina in the voice and frame as well as virtuosity. Susan Bullock obviously relished the work: she filled the stage with her presence and the auditorium with her voice, making the hair repeatedly rise on the back of one's neck as the drama intensified and the music went from altitude to altitude. Bullock was much more than ably seconded by the committed responses of Johan Reuter, Anne Schwanewilms and Jane Henschel, and all four in turn were superbly partnered by the orchestra under Mark Elder. A great deal of credit has to go to Charles Edwards for conceiving a way of making it all work, not easy when a piece of performance art starts at a wrought level and then unremittingly mounts and mounts; to manage this without strain, keeping the psychological complexities always in view, is an achievement.
       It was an achievement brilliantly aided by the production design. It is a scene of blood, of great classical edifices in ruin, of destruction, death, murder, madness, collapse, vast danger impending, all visually and structurally represented - a concrete reflection of the music and its meanings. Indeed all this is in the music; all this is in the original story itself, which Strauss turned into music that seems vast - amazingly, the performance is shorter than average in running time, yet it feels as if it has monumental proportions. And psychologically it is indeed monumental.
       The two salient facts that explain the architecture of the work and its many meanings is that it was written as the Habsburg empire trembled on the edge of war - the First World War was just a few years away - and as Freud's view began to electrify (the pun is unavoidable) perceptions of human nature and relationships. Elektra and her father: the huge destruction of an imperial edifice: these are inescapably themes that the first audiences of Elektra would have recognised and grasped, and which the music would have driven into their souls with barbs of steel.
       But as this production shows, one does not have to live in times that actually exemplify the themes in order to be moved and shaken by them. It is one purpose of art to give the experience a truth in any time or place: and this superb production of Elektra is proof that it can.
AC Grayling