Few operas can evoke such storms of applause at the end of a performance as Elektra. Its music and its leading role is unique in opera literature, and Strauss, the great tone painter, was able to go to the limits of his time with this music.
Richard Strauss first saw the theater play “Salome” in 1902 in a production by Max Reinhard, and three years later created for the first time an expressionist sound world that seemed to break with everything previously known. Despite the now thirteen years that had passed since the play’s first performance, the piece, set to music as an opera, met with open hostility from traditionalists. But the first performance in Dresden became a sensation and “Salome” began its triumphal march around the world.
