This play is terrifying and beautiful, beyond all measure, retelling as it does the terrible story of Orestes'' return to
avenge his father, Agamemnon, by killing his mother and her lover and husband (her consort) Aegisthus. It follows very closely the Sophoclean original, except that there are five serving-women and a female overseer here instead of a Chorus; only one of these is at all sympathetic to Electra, and she is beaten by the others after saying so. Electra is a priestess, and a royal daughter, yet she is fed with the dogs. The beauty of her madness, and of the language it is expressed in, is extraordinary -- far
greater than Sophocles (who was a far greater playwright than he was a poet -- and great that is). The young man, supposedly a messenger come to tell of or announce the death of Orestes, is, in fact, Orestes himself. With his companion, he slays his mother; her consort, Aegisthus comes in and he is slain in turn. The people rejoice, and the few loyal to
clytemnestra and Aegisthus are slain. Electra drops to the ground, senseless or dead. She had become the pure embodiment of Vengeance itself -- hatred the only food of her soul, in this play. (Sophocles is much kinder -- she lives there for love of her brother, as well; he is less kind, however to her sister). This play became the libretto for an opera by Richard Strauss, first performed at the Dresden State Opera on 25 January 1909.