Elektra, Royal Opera House, London

Much has been made, throughout Elektra's history, of its relationship to Freudian theory. Written during the emergence of the psychoanalytic movement, Strauss's opera reflects both its methodology and preoccupations by probing successive layers of disorder within the minds of its characters. Unlike Freud, however, Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal refuse to see the process as therapeutic. The work's true horror lies in its tacit assertion that there is no escape from one's own, un...

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