La Fura Dels Baus's video: Elektra - La Fura dels Baus

Blood is gushing forth in the barrack square. Elektra is biding her time. Enormous steel giants are rising. Elektra curses her mother. A forest is set on fire at Umestan. Elektra demands revenge! Norrlands Operan and the dramatic art collective La Fura Dels Baus are creating a monumental outdoor performance of Richard Strauss’ one-act opera. Cranes, mechanical giants with singers standing inside their chests, skips filled with blood. Elektra is NorrlandsOperan’s biggest ever production. The opera is based on the ancient myth about the woman who does everything in her power to revenge the murder of her father Agamemnon. The stage is two hundred metres long, and will be erected at the old military command centre Umestan near the heart of Umeå city. The contours of the dead King in his grave can be seen all over the area. The grandstand can hold two thousand spectators, and also represents the palace in which Elektra’s dysfunctional family (to put it mildly) live with their servants. The music is powerful and expressive. At the first performance in 1909, the audience felt ready to faint as they rushed out of the opera house. Strauss’ courage inspires La Fura dels Baus in their staging of Elektra’s wrath and vindictiveness. The West Bothnian twilight is the perfect background for the burning forest and the river of blood. NorrlandsOperan’s Symphony Orchestra, the soloists and the extras whose bodies help breathe life into the steel giants, the hundreds of people working behind the scenes, and – last but not least – the audience all contribute to making this a historic performance. In Umeå, 2014.