With his TV “Salome” production, Götz Friedrich has created a compelling transposition of Oscar Wilde’s text and Richard Strauss’s music. The palace courtyard becomes a world of its own, faces turn into landscapes of conflicting emotions, and passions into overwhelming obsessions. With filmic means, Friedrich draws the viewer’s attention to the seductive fascination of evil. In the title role, Teresa Stratas is impressively convincing as the young and sensual princess, but she is equally impressive as a singer and actress. Karl Böhm conducts the Vienna Philharmonic with a verve and dramatic impetus that fit seamlessly into the action.
Elektra
In this production, history, psychoanalysis and modern-day apocalyptic visions are presented with compelling urgency through Friedrich’s staging and Böhm’s artistic mastery. “Elektra” becomes a contemporary myth of desperate, unrelenting humanity. “Seldom before, surely, have the often erotic ideas of Hofmannsthal’s libretto been so explicitly delineated or its tragic grandeur so movingly realised. […] Leonie Rysanek, in her first and possibly only Elektra, surmounted the score’s superhuman demands with an interpretive achievement that crowns her career of more than 30 years. […] As a whole, the film showed that opera on television can be a great experience…” (Daily Telegraph)