Deborah Polaski IS Elektra!

On December 9, I experienced one of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra's concert performances of my all-time favorite opera, Richard Strauss's 1909 dramatic masterpiece, ELEKTRA. It was one of four outings of the work in the 2008/2009 valedictory season of the legendary American maestro, Lorin Maazel, as the NYPO's Music Director.

This concert performance was a true event. The expanded Straussian forces of the NYPO under Maazel sounded gorgeous--expansive, open, everything in tune, with exceptional attention to musical details. Where the orchestra could explode with bombast, it never did--climaxes were remarkably loud but the overall performance was captivatingly restrained and internalized. It let the drama of the work come out from within.

One must say, however, that despite Maazel's extraordinary interpretation of the score -- a more inspired performance from the maestro than most in recent history -- and the sheer beauty of the orchestra, this ELEKTRA belonged to the performer of the title role, the great American dramatic soprano, Deborah Polaski. In what turned out to be her astonishing 175th career performance of ELEKTRA, Polaski belied her veteran status with singing that was fresher and more focused than in several seasons past. She has always been a distinguished artist -- a Bayreuth veteran with a repertoire centered in the most vocally punishing roles of the operatic repertoire -- but she absolutely shone on Tuesday. Like Maazel, Polaski took an introspective approach. She towered where necessary, both in voice and presence, but it was never in an effort to overemphasize Elektra's hatred, fear or eventual madness. This was not a growling, vengeful fiend but a Mycenaean Princess driven to hate. Polaski's voice had the marvelously familiar "rolling thunder" in the middle and upper-middle ranges that I have loved since my first hearing of her almost 15 years ago -- in another astonishing Elektra in-concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Barenboim, co-starring my beloved Alessandra Marc as Elektra's sister, Chrysothemis -- and her top notes were better placed than they have been in quite a while. All in all, as the person who accompanied me to the performance said about Polaski, "wow, she's really something... she really IS Elektra!"

Hear the one-and-only Deborah Polaski in Elektra's great opening monologue, "Allein, Weh ganz allein" (clip from YouTube):