1
Special thanks to our education community partners
Contents Activity guide overview A brief history of opera Vocal spotlight Characters in Elektra Elektra overview Synopsis Composer biography : Richard Strauss Interview with conductor Alex Prior The music of Elektra Greek tragedy Expressionism in Elektra Activity: Creative concept Activity: Storyboard Activity: Poster design Activity: Character reflections Activity: Design a playbill Elektra further listening
Nothing beats the excitement of live opera! For more information on how your class can attend a dress rehearsal at special student pricing, contact us by email at education@edmontonopera.com or visit us online at edmontonopera.com/discover/education
3 5 7 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 18 19 21 23 24 25 26
Photos courtesy of Teatro Comunale di Bologna, 2015 production of Elektra starring Elizabeth Blancke-Biggs
2
Education and Activity Guide Overview
Opera 101 Opera is the art form of all art forms — it combines theatre, orchestral music, unamplified live singing, visual design, and much more. Going to the opera is not only a beautiful artistic experience, it can also be a very educational trip. Opera gives students the opportunity to engage with a variety of historical movements in literature, art, and politics. Each opera sheds light on the era it was composed in and contains themes relevant to today’s world. To make the most of your opera experience, please read the following pointers on opera etiquette before attending the dress rehearsal. Arrive early! Your tickets will be available at the auditorium 45 minutes prior to show time. Please allow enough time to seat your group — we suggest 20 minutes. The dress rehearsal for Elektra will begin promptly at 7 p.m., so allot extra time for ticket pickup, seating, etc. It is also best to have students use the washroom prior to locating your seats within the theatre.
This education and activity guide is designed for teachers, students, and those who are interested in engaging with various aspects of the opera both before and after attending the performance. The first part of this guide is more reading-based, with a detailed overview, synopsis, and conceptual discussion of Edmonton Opera’s Elektra. This is essential learning before you proceed to the activities because it places the production within a specific framework. Teachers may distribute the content for students to read as-is, or choose to go over the material with the entire class. This guide is intended for all grades attending the performance; there are some suggested ways to adapt the content based on difficulty level, but teachers are encouraged to modify activities to suit the needs of their class. Please contact us with any questions about this guide at education@edmontonopera.com. We can provide resources for further discussion, suggestions on how to tailor activities and content for your class, and more.
3
Applause is welcome!
•
Opera is spectacle. Your presence in the audience is essential to complete the whole experience. Enjoy the performance and respond to what you see. Unlike television or film, every live performance is unique: only you and the performers will share the experience you have in the theatre. Your warmth and good humour are important to them, so when you like something, tell them with your applause.
• •
• •
Applaud after the arias as well as after the performance; you can shout “Bravo!” for a man, “Brava!” for a woman, and “Bravi!” for more than one person, or the whole performance.
Keep in mind:
No cameras or recording devices.
• •
The artists’ images and performances belong to them and we ask you to respect that by refraining from recording their work in any way.
•
Other pointers: • • •
Please stay seated. Once in the theatre it is courteous to remain seated until the end of the performance. Please do not leave the theatre unless there is an emergency. No food, gum, or drinks of any kind (except water) in the theatre. Students are welcome to bring packed food items, but these must not be eaten in the theatre. Food may only be consumed out in the lobby. Bottled water is allowed in the theatre. Acoustics are very good in the Jubilee auditorium, so any sounds of food being unwrapped, bottles being crushed, etc. will be heard throughout.
The performance of Elektra is 100 minutes with no intermission. Turn off your cell phones and all electronic devices. Keep movement and voices down to a minimum, as this is a live dress rehearsal performance.
4
Use the bathrooms before the rehearsal begins. Be silent if the performance has to stop for a few moments (this is a performance, but also a working rehearsal so it may be necessary to stop at times). If you must use the washroom during the performance, please be accompanied by an adult supervisor. The ushers might let you in again when there is an appropriate pause in the action, and in Elektra, there is no intermission.
5
6
7
8
Characters
Elektra — soprano Daughter of Agamemnon and Klytämnestra Klytämnestra — mezzo-soprano Elektra’s mother Chrysothemis — soprano Elektra’s sister Orest — baritone Elektra’s brother Aegisth — tenor Klytämnestra’s lover, Agamemnon’s cousin
9
expressionism that was not yet mainstream. The orchestra in Elektra is large and produces clashing sounds, which create a dissonant and chromatic landscape for the opera. The music is not ‘pleasant’, rather it relies on some degree of sensory assault.
Overview
Elektra is easily one of the most brilliant operas ever composed, and also one of the most difficult to perform. When Richard Strauss premiered this piece at Dresden in 1909, the audience could not believe their eyes and ears — they had just experienced one hundred minutes of radical operatic genius. They stood perplexed and benumbed for several moments before bursting into thunderous cheers and applause. Based on the ancient Greek myth of Electra, this opera follows the journey of its tormented protagonist as she mourns the death of her father and promises revenge on her mother for killing him. It explores the deep psychological turmoil that grief can bring to a fragile mind, turning Elektra from a noble daughter into an obsessive murderer. The music of Elektra is also particularly inventive because it seeks to both mirror and fuel the protagonist’s emotional states. When the orchestra becomes dissonant, Elektra’s mind descends into chaos; when she runs around the stage frantically, the orchestra keeps up with tremendous pace. As Elektra’s emotional state deteriorates, the music becomes even more complex and harsh.
Strauss’s greatest triumph with Elektra was creating a score that does not allow the audience a second’s rest from the action. The opera starts with absolute intensity, and carries its energy throughout, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats for the entire duration. The singing also never loses its magnitude — especially for Elektra. This is a challenging role for any soprano to perform, and needs immense vocal stamina, requiring her to jump from one dramatic note to another. Elektra has often been described as the most visceral and commanding one-woman show ever written. As you settle into your seats for the performance, prepare yourself to delve into the darkness of a mind possessed by hatred. Elektra is no ordinary piece — it is theatre that immerses you completely, blending ancient myth with modernist music to create a spectacular opera narrative never experienced before. We hope you enjoy the Alberta premiere of Richard Strauss’s masterpiece Elektra.
Stylistically, Strauss almost belongs in his own category. Both Elektra and his previous opera Salome defied the musical conventions of the time, and embodied an
10
however, backs out, leaving an enraged Elektra to act on her own. Elektra runs up to one of the strangers who just arrived at the palace, asking him questions about Orest. The stranger is revealed to be Orest himself, who had disguised himself to sneak into the palace. Ecstatic at this reunion, brother and sister comfort one another. The hour of vengeance now upon them, Orest heads into Klytämnestra’s chambers and proceeds to fulfill his bloody revenge. Elektra revels in her mother’s panicked screams. Aegisth, Klytämnestra’s lover, arrives in the palace at this moment and faces the same gruesome fate at Orest’s hands. Possessed by euphoria and madness at this successful double murder, Elektra dances, and dances, and dances, until she drops. Elektra’s fragile mind succumbs to its frenzy. Orest leaves the palace in silence.
Synopsis The servants outside the royal palace are debating whether Elektra will come out of hiding today, or if she will continue to grieve her father’s death. They mock Elektra for her madness, as she appears and steers clear of the group. On her own, Elektra agonizes over her father’s murder, recounting how he was killed by her mother Klytämnestra upon returning from Troy. Elektra declares her revenge on Klytämnestra, plotting murder with the help of her sister Chrysothemis and brother Orest, whose arrival she awaits. Chrysothemis rushes in suddenly, informing Elektra that Klytämnestra and her lover Aegisth have decided that Elektra will be locked up in a tower. Klytämnestra enters, engaging Elektra in conversation, telling her about the nightmares she has been having. Elektra replies that a sacrifice must be made in order to cure Klytämnestra of those nightmares. She then declares that the sacrifice, in fact, is Klytämnestra’s own life. Elektra describes the brutal ways in which Klytämnestra will be murdered, that too at the hands of her own son Orest. Two strangers then arrive, and Klytämnestra is taken away to meet them, leaving Elektra alone again. Chrysothemis runs back to Elektra, informing her that their brother Orest has died. In shock at first, Elektra soon decides that she and Chrysothemis must carry out the murder. Chrysothemis,
11
it’s unplayable on the piano as well.” The influence he drew from Wagner was because of his friendship with Alexander Ritter; the tone poems Strauss wrote were a turn away from his Brahms influence and instead heavily influenced by Wagner. Elektra, in 1909, marked the beginning of his partnership with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which would last 25 years. Strauss had a worldwide reputation as a conductor, and conducted at the Munich Opera (1886), Weimar Court (1889 and 1894), the Vienna State Opera (1919 to 1924), visited the United States twice (1904 and 1921) and was the musical director at the Berlin Opera for 12 years, starting in 1898. Although he was invited to a position in the new German government during the 1920s, he did not align with the new regime. He came into conflict with the Nazi government particularly after he insisted on collaborating with Jewish writer Stefan Zwieg for Die schweigsame Frau, and by the 1940s left Germany for Bavaria and then Vienna, Austria, where he continued to write music. He spent much of the post-war period in Switzerland, and died on Sept. 8, 1949, at his home in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, at the age of 85.
Composer Biography— Richard Strauss (1864-1949) A highly skilled composer and conductor, Richard Strauss’s advice to conductors, particularly of his own work was, “Above all, don’t be dull.” One critic noted that even if Strauss had never composed, he still would be listed among the most important musicians of his generation for his conducting reputation alone. Strauss was born June 11, 1864, in Munich, the first child of the second marriage of Franz Joseph Strauss. The elder Strauss was the first horn player of the Munich Opera, and the younger Strauss received piano lessons when he was four years old and composition lessons by age six. Later, he would also play the violin. He became the assistant of Hans Von Bulow at the Meiningen Orchestra in 1885, becoming the principal conductor the following year at Von Bulow’s recommendation. He wrote two operas before his mega-hit Salome — Guntrum (1894) and Feuersnot (1901), neither of which were well received. Strauss knew how to test the limits of an orchestra, and the music for Salome makes use of extended tonality, chromaticism, a wide range of keys, unusual modulations, tonal ambiguity and polytonality. Supposedly, at an orchestra rehearsal for Salome, when the oboist indicated that a certain passage might be playable on the piano but not the oboe, Strauss replied “Don’t worry,
12
What are you looking forward to with Elektra? I am so excited to conduct Elektra. It’s one of those really pivotal, brilliant, and most exciting masterpieces in the repertoire. It is any conductor’s dream to be working on this opera. Plus we have a stellar cast and an incredible orchestra here in Edmonton! It’s going to be a good event. Is there a particular approach you are going to take? Strauss is great for conductors — you just have to do what he wrote and everything works. So my approach is to do exactly what Strauss wrote, openly and honestly, and let the music speak. Of course, you have to add excitement, energy, and colour. Especially colour. Strauss is also very precise about the sound of each word in the German language. So as an orchestra, we will have to be really conscious of the words that are being sung and play accordingly, in order to tell the story very clearly through music.
In conversation with Alexander Prior, conductor of Elektra
Vibrant, passionate, and wicked smart — that’s how we would describe Alexander Prior, the internationally acclaimed conductor who makes his Edmonton Opera debut with Elektra this season. At the wise young age of 24, Prior has conducted at leading opera houses across the world. Edmontonians are familiar with his work, having seen him often over the past few years with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, where Prior’s charismatic stage presence has made him a favourite with the orchestra and audiences alike! He was recently appointed the new Chief Conductor of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, and we will be seeing a lot more of Prior in the coming years. How does our enthusiastic maestro feel about conducting Strauss’s complex and dramatic masterpiece Elektra? Read on to find out.
13
Where would you place Strauss musically and historically? He is on the cusp, and I don’t think he can be put in a box. Strauss became much more conservative as he went along, but in Elektra there is a modernist sense of foreboding. Both Elektra (1909) and Salome (1905) are very aware, through story and language, that the world is on the cusp of something terrible. With horrific things happening in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time, it was all going downhill. The pinnacle of romanticism was beginning to fade away. What makes Elektra great? Elektra is such a hardcore opera. It offers spectacle, vocal fireworks, and a hugely powerful orchestra. Seriously, just the level of power that Strauss gets in the orchestra is unique. It’s almost two hours of being right at the edge of your seat. Like a roller coaster, there’s not a moment of letting go.
What do you think audiences will love about Elektra? Elektra is a really good opera for first timers and experienced operagoers alike. It is the orchestral equivalent of heavy metal music — intense, visceral, and immediate. The music is a good head banger at times, which is quite fun, and allows a very physical experience. Elektra can also be an emotional experience, because it addresses the themes of longing, loneliness, and a desire to find justice when there isn’t any to be found. Like any great opera, it helps us understand ourselves a bit better. Elektra gives you a short, strong dose of opera in its most intense form. There’s no time to get bored, no time to get sleepy. Elektra is just great entertainment!
14
The music of Elektra
Richard Strauss produced a revolutionary score with Elektra. His previous opera Salome had already pushed so many musical boundaries, employing dissonance (explained below) to great effect. Elektra built on that and seemed intended to make the audience feel overwhelmed, shocked, but awe-inspired nonetheless. Here are some terms that will help with your understanding of the music in Elektra. These are all present within the opera, and whether or not you are a music student, you will be able to recognize them while watching the opera.
• Leitmotif — Literally “leading theme” in German, a
• Bitonality — The combination of two keys at the
same time. Bitonality may be used for the duration of entire compositions or on a smaller scale in individual chords. An example of this latter type is the “Elektra chord,” which Strauss uses in the Leitmotif (see below) of the character of Elektra.
leitmotif is a recurring musical motto that represents a person, place, emotion, idea, object, or any other element in a musical work. The use of leitmotifs helps to provide structural unity to a composition, and they may be combined together to form a dense and allusive web of thematic material. The idea originated in the mid-19th century and was developed into a compositional technique by Richard Wagner. Strauss uses leitmotifs to great effect in many of his works, including the operas Salome and Elektra.
• Consonance — A sweet, harmonious sound without
any tension requiring resolution. The most consonant intervals are the unison and octave, fifth, sixth and third. Consonance is the opposite of dissonance.
• Dissonance — Two or more notes that are perceived
It is comprised of the simultaneous soundings of E major and C-sharp major, re-spelled enharmonically: E, G-sharp/A-flat, B plus C-sharp/Dflat and E-sharp/F. Composers sometimes use the dissonant clashes of bitonality to signify
psychological turmoil, since bitonality by its nature contains harmonic impulses that are contrary to one another. Elektra contains several instances of this.
to be in discord or that “sound wrong” together. Dissonant intervals include the Minor 2nd, Major 7th, and tritone. Dissonance feels unstable to the listener and calls for harmonic resolution. It is the opposite of consonance.
15
• Chromaticism — Chromatic notes are those that
Greek tragedy
don’t belong to the prevailing harmony or scale of a musical composition (so named because in early music notation these notes were coloured). Chromatic is the reverse of diatonic, which refers to notes of a scale or harmony derived exclusively from those available in its given key. Chromaticism can add drama and intensity to music by introducing notes or chords that are dissonant to the key and that call for resolution.
•
Elektra is based on a well-known play by ancient Greek playwright Sophocles. Electra is regarded as one of the best Greek tragedies both in terms of structure and content. The form of Greek tragedy has been studied widely, and even theorized by Aristotle whose Poetics serves as the basis for our contemporary understanding of Western theatre. So what is tragedy? In colloquial usage, tragedy means something sad or catastrophic. In ancient Greek drama, it refers to a style of theatre that follows certain structural rules. The origin of the word ‘tragedy’ is somewhat strange — it comes from ‘tragos’ meaning goat and ‘oide’ meaning ode or song. The goatsong referred to performances that were done wearing goatskins in honour of Dionysus, the god of wine and theatre. By its very nature, tragedy is meant to be about renewal and communal growth. Despite portraying sad and horrifying stories, tragedies aid both audience and performers in finding spiritual rebirth.
Tonality — The prevailing system of organizing harmony in Western music from roughly 1600 to 1910. Within the tonal system, chords are predominantly based on the pitches in a key’s scale, and these chords are organized into a hierarchy of greater and lesser importance based on their distance from the tonic, or home pitch. On a larger scale, tonal compositions are written in a single key, which begins and closes a work, with more exploratory harmonic material in the middle.
16
Elements of tragedy A tragedy typically follows strict structure, that is, it contains a well-defined beginning, middle, and end. In many cases, tragedies also fulfill a more general dramatic structure: the story starts with exposition, we see the character’s rising action, resulting in a climax, which quickly moves into a falling action and then the dénouement or resolution. Perhaps the most defining element of tragedy is the presence of a tragic hero or heroine. The play is focused entirely on the actions and fate of this one character, and peripheral characters or events are primarily in service of this protagonist’s journey. The audience has the most to learn from this character, which is amply evident in the titles of each play — Electra, Oedipus the King, Iphigenia at Aulis, Medea, etc. Plot is also essential to tragedy. Each event in the drama must be linked in a chain, so that the story tumbles towards its conclusion. There cannot be any actions that do not serve the central plot. In Electra, for example, there are no subplots; everything that happens directly pushes Electra to her fate. When she is standing outside the palace mourning her father’s death and plotting revenge, Electra’s sister arrives and informs her their mother Clytemnestra has decreed that Electra will be imprisoned soon. This puts a timer on Electra’s revenge plot and she realizes she needs to act immediately, setting her own tragedy in motion.
Fate is the ruling force of every Greek tragedy. The tragic hero or heroine is pretty much ‘doomed’ from the start because their fate has already been decided by the gods. Everything that happens in the play takes the protagonist towards their inevitable tragic ending. The protagonist may think they have free will and believe they can find a ‘happy ending’, but the audience realizes quite early on that this can never be possible. Catharsis is an element that describes the impact of tragedy on its audience. Catharsis means ‘purging through pity or fear’. The audience must bear witness to the horrors experienced by the tragic figure, and in seeing this can cleanse themselves spiritually. In essence, a tragedy projects the worst possibilities of human nature on stage as a way for us to feel their impact without actually going through the tragedy ourselves. This is why Greek tragedies can often be absolutely immoral — murder, incest, adultery, etc. are part of the narrative and their harsh consequences are on display for the audience to feel disgusted by. After watching Elektra at the Jubilee, students are encouraged to reflect on their experience and identify the elements of tragedy they saw on stage. The ‘Storyboard’ activity below is designed to assist in this analysis of the opera.
17
dissonant and juxtaposes various orchestral elements to create a heightened experience of chaos, which is characteristic of expressionism. It is also interesting to note that Elektra was composed in a world where Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis were widely known. Only a few years before Elektra premiered, Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams was published. Strauss’s opera thus not only embraces expressionism, it also dramatizes his understanding of psychology and trauma. Elektra’s ‘madness’ is a result of her father’s death and her subsequent isolation from society. She becomes consumed with revenge as a coping mechanism, and her obsession defines both the music and staging of the opera.
Expressionism in Elektra
1909 was a thoroughly exciting time to compose an opera. The artistic landscape of Europe was undergoing several radical transformations, of which Strauss himself was a major part. The second half of the 19th century had been dominated by naturalism and realism in theatre, which focused on storylines of ‘the everyday’. Dramatists were interested in decoding the reasons why people act the way they do, resulting in a lot of dialogue-heavy plays. This was the world where rational thought dominated, one that preferred psychological approaches to human nature, one that had just embraced Darwin’s The Origin of Species. Many artists felt stifled by this rationalistic direction. Towards the end of the century, we began to see outbursts of emotion, of the unexplained and the irrational, make their way back into art. This was Expressionism. Music, theatre, painting, and sculpture — every art form experienced a sudden rush of chaos. The focus was now on the individual and how they perceived the distorted world around them. And the world was, indeed, changing. Just a few years into the 20th century, the First World War unleashed its devastation on Europe. Strauss and his contemporaries felt a sense of impending doom and channeled it through their art. In Elektra, we see a protagonist whose world is thrown into complete disarray after the death of her father, and wrestles her demons during the entire performance. The music is
”The Scream” (1893) by Edvard Munch is considered one of the highlights of expressionist art
18
Option B: Older Students A Vision Board is used to show a unifying idea for a creative project. Often, directors will use a vision board to focus their vision for a production. It features specific elements such as costumes, set design, and props. Establish your setting:
Activity — Creative Concept! Pre-performance activity One very important facet of every production is the design of the show. Each production has a dedicated team of designers – both costume and scenery – working with the director to make their vision come to fruition. In this activity, students will create costumes and set ideas for what they think the opera should look like. They can pull inspiration from a production that they have seen, other productions, and, most importantly, their own imaginations. Option A: Younger students Read the overview and synopsis of Elektra as a class to make the story of the opera clear. Now, students must generate ideas to design this production! 1. Divide students into small groups, and give each group two large sheets of butcher paper. Students will trace two students on the paper, and then draw costumes on their silhouettes. Choice of which two characters they want to design costumes for is up to the students. 2. In these groups, students can also then design a scenic concept — what does the stage look like? Are there levels or backdrops?
•
•
19
Do you want it to be set in the time/place that the opera was originally written for, or in another time and place? Have a good reason for changing the setting – make it appropriate for the story and music of the opera. Do the themes present remind you of a specific time period? Do you envision the opera having simpler or more complex costumes? Don’t just change the period because you can – consider what costumes you might like them to wear and where the story might take place. If you pick an appropriate historical event to centre those details around, it will help unify the details of your production.
Costume Design •
•
•
Props Design
Research what kinds of clothing people wore in the period/location that you chose to set the opera in. What did those of lower social class wear? What would royalty wear? What accessories might each character have? How would you distinguish major and minor characters of the opera? Consider the colours that you would want most represented in the opera – what were the colours of royalty in the setting of the opera? What colours best reflect any relevant themes present in the opera? Is it a bright, hopeful story? Or dark and bleak? Create some colour swatches to use as inspiration for your vision board. Based off your research, create some costumes for your production – pull multiple images from magazines, Internet searches, etc. to create your own costumes. Don’t just use other productions costumes – create your own. Draw something, use the multiple images to make a collage of what looks you want for each character, etc.
•
Set Design •
• •
• •
What supplies do the characters in the opera need? Do they need swords, brooms, lanterns, axes, etc.? What should those look like to reflect the style of the setting? Create a properties list and some sketches.
20
Research the prominent architectural styles of the period/setting that you chose. What kind of houses did people live in? Were the housing styles different between low and high social classes? What would the royalty/upper class of the period have lived in? Consider the main locations of the opera – outside Elektra’s family home. How might these places look? What building materials might the people of the period have had? What should your set be made out of, or made to look like? What decorations might you need for the set? Do you need curtains, vases, flowers, torches, etc.? Using your research, create set designs for the main scenes of the opera. As with the costume design, use images from magazines and Internet searches to pull inspiration from. Make a collage of the images collected, or your own original sketch.
Action, and Resolution/Dénouement/ Catastrophe. After filling in their storyboard with those elements, have them present their storyboard to the class. b. Option B: They will need to divide the story of the opera into five specific sections: Setting (Time and Place), Characters, Problem, and the main events or the plot. After they have filled in that information in their storyboard, they can present it to the class. 4. For younger students, consider filling out the storyboard as a class, focusing on Characters, Setting/Place, Time, Problem, and Events. Next, have the students fill in their own individual copies to take home. 5. Remind students that there is more than one correct answer for this assignment. For example, students might have a different idea of what event is the “climax”, or have differing opinions on what the “problem” of the opera is. 6. Below are the two templates for this assignment: Note: This activity can also be completed prior to attending the performance by simply using the provided synopsis as a guide. However, it is recommended that students revise the storyboard after seeing Elektra to reflect any new perspectives they may have gained.
Activity — Storyboard Post-performance activity A storyboard is a sequence of drawings, typically with some directions and dialogue, representing the shots planned for a movie or television production. It can be used to graphically represent the main elements of the plot (exposition, climax, etc.), or focus on the general plot, setting, and characters. In this activity, students will reflect on the performance of Elektra that they just attended, and create a storyboard to represent some of the aspects of the production. Activity: 1. Choose one of the provided storyboard templates for your class to work on, or create your own to better suit the learning needs of your students. 2. Divide your students into groups of 3-5 and provide each group with templates for a storyboard. For added creativity, they can construct their own, so long as it includes the same elements as the template that you select. 3. Explain to the class that their task is to fill in the elements of their storyboard with aspects of the story of the opera that your class went to see. a. Option A: They will need to divide the plot of the opera into five specific elements: Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling
21
EXPOSITION
RISING ACTION
CHARACTERS
SETTING PLACE
CLIMAX
TIME
PROBLEM
FALLING ACTION
DÉNOUEMENT/CATASTROPHE
EVENTS
22
So now that you have some of the basics, design a poster! Be sure to read the content of this guide to learn more about the opera — this will inform your poster design. Here is an example of our poster for the production of Turandot:
Activity — Poster design Pre-performance activity When creating a poster for an opera there are many things to consider. It is important to keep in mind the director’s vision for the production and allow ample time for research through different resources such as online, literature, listening to the music, and watching other productions. In this activity, you will design a poster for Edmonton Opera’s Elektra. When creating an image to represent an opera you must consider the time period, setting, themes, characters, and plot. The designer must also keep in mind our audience that we are trying to appeal to and what types of media we will use to reach them. After researching, it is important to sketch and brainstorm your ideas. It can be helpful to make a collage or mood board of different visuals and ideas that you would like to incorporate into the final image. Other important factors include the hierarchy of information (what is the most important information and how will you show that importance – size of type, colour, location, etc.), typography, colour (contrast, significance of colour), composition (placement, size and shape), and form among others. How would you illustrate Elektra? Is your image a literal or symbolic portrayal?
23
Activity — Character reflections •
Post-performance activity Students will try to further understand the characters of Elektra by doing an in depth character study. Guide the students through the following discussion questions to understand their character’s motivations, strengths, struggles, etc. Have students consider the characters and the role they play in the story. Divide the students into groups, and have each student choose a character to research. Students will need to create a series of journal entries that reflect conflicts present throughout the story of the opera. They can write all of their entries on one character, or write a few entries for multiple characters. ELEKTRA | KLYTÄMNESTRA | CHRYSOTHEMIS | OREST | AEGISTH •
•
Foundations: o How old are you? Where are you from? Where do you live now? Do you have any family that we know of? What are your friends/family like? o What is your relationship with the other characters in the opera like? How would your friends/family describe you in three words? (Think of mental, physiological, and physical characteristics)
•
24
o What is your best quality? What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses? Getting deeper: o What are your dreams and goals? What drives you to try to reach those goals? How does this affect the choices your character makes in the story? What steps in the opera do you take to achieve your objective? o What obstacles stand in your way? Are there any obstacles that are beyond your control (social status, other character’s actions, laws, etc.)? How will you overcome those challenges? What are the outcomes of your choices? o Looking back from the end-point of the opera, would you have done anything differently? Today: o Are there any characters in modern-day television, literature, movies, theatre, etc., that remind you of the character that you chose? Are there any characters with similar characteristics or traits? o If your character were alive today, how would they be more or less successful? What might they have done differently to achieve their objectives? How is the character’s personality expressed through the music of the opera?
A major part of building the playbill is research. Very few of these elements have to be written by students themselves, it is more a matter of researching online and compiling the required content. For example, the Edmonton Opera website contains information like a cast list, synopsis, and artist biographies while a composer biography can be found through Google.
Activity — Design a playbill Pre-performance activity Recommended for grades 6 and above, ideal for grades 9 and above. At each performance of Elektra, Edmonton Opera distributes a playbill (also referred to as a program) that contains some useful content about the opera for audiences to read before the performance, during intermission, and even afterwards at home.
You can see an electronic version of our Turandot playbill here for reference: http://www.edmontonopera.com/connect/multimedia/int ermezzo
In this activity, students will design their own mini-version of the Elektra playbill. Based on the grade level, the playbill can be a simple handwritten one-pager focusing on content or it can be a more detailed multi-page document including images, editorial content, etc.
Some elements typically found in an opera playbill are: • • • • • • •
Composer biography Cast and production team list Director’s notes/Conductor’s notes Synopsis Program notes (a production history, thematic evaluation of the opera, historical context, etc.) Artists’ biographies Any exciting or interesting information about the opera, about this particular production, or more.
25
Elektra further listening • •
•
Elektra full opera: https://youtu.be/jq1qfG0r4LE Elektra - Allein! Weh, ganz allein! o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsNAW bslCGo Birgit Nilsson, 1967 studio recording with Wiener Philharmoniker and Sir Georg Solti. o Elektra comes back for her daily ritual in memory of her father, who upon his return from Troy was killed while bathing by Klytämnestra and Aegisth and dragged out into the courtyard. Elektra now starts imagining the day when her father will be avenged and then of the ensuing celebration in which she will lead the triumphal dance. o https://youtu.be/AjOseYmPwgI — soprano Elizabeth Blancke-Biggs, who plays Elektra in Edmonton Opera’s production, performs this aria at Teatro Comunale di Bologna in 2015. Elektra - Orest! Orest! Orest! o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2TzKC 67o9I An excerpt from a film of Götz Friedrich (1982). Leonie Rysanek as Elektra and Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau as Orest. The Wiener Philharmoniker were conducted by Karl Böhm. o Just before this song, Elektra had been greeted by a mysterious man while she was
•
standing in the courtyard. He claimed to be a messenger on his way to deliver a message to the lady of the house. After noticing how Elektra was grieving for her supposedlydeceased brother, he reveals his true identity: he is Orest, come back in disguise! In this song, Elektra is initially ecstatic at her brother’s safe return, but also ashamed of what she has become and how she has sacrificed her own royal state for their vengeful cause. o https://youtu.be/-FnJ6ofGuPg — a performance by Elizabeth Blancke-Biggs and Thomas Hall in the 2015 production of Elektra at Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Salome – Ach! Ich habe deinen Mund geküsst, Johannan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr6mjT4A-fc 3:15 – Argued to be the most dissonant chord to date – at its core it is an incomplete A dominant
26
seventh chord, with the major third between F# and A# imposed over top. •
2016/17 SEASON SPONSORS
Also sprach Zarathustra (1896) https://youtu.be/dfe8tCcHnKY – This timeless composition is most popularly known for its use as the opening theme of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The piece is a tone poem by Strauss based on Friedrich Nietzsche’s novel of the same name.
Elektra production sponsor
For further questions about this education and activity guide, please contact us at: education@edmontonopera.com
Elektra opening night sponsor
Government and Foundation Support
Special thanks to our Education Dress Rehearsal Sponsor: And to our education community partner:
27