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Spatt had a martyrised expression. In her heart she felt a sick trembling of her religious belief that Elektra was the greatest opera ever composed. For Audrey had the prestige of Paris and of the automobile. Mrs. Spatt, however, said not a word. Mr. Ziegler, on the other hand, after shuffling some seconds for utterance, ejaculated with sublime anger: "Vulgar!"
She thought of Cowperwood at times; but he seemed to her to be too wrapped up in grim tremendous things, far apart from this romantic world of amateur dramatics in which she was involved. Airs from the Orient Cowperwood gained his first real impression of Stephanie at the Garrick Players, where he went with Aileen once to witness a performance of "Elektra."
Spatt, cheered by the new opportunity for conversation, and in his eagerness abrogating all rules, explained how he had been in London on the previous day for a performance of Strauss's Elektra, and according to his custom had called at the offices of the Suffragette Union to see whether he could in any manner aid the cause. Mr.
Phaedra and Elektra, not even so virtuous as Mary, who failed of being what she should be!
Three or four thousand automobiles were charging up and down Broadway, and there was a fire going on a couple of blocks up the street, and I think a suffragette procession was passing, too; but after what I'd just been through the quiet was very soothing to my eardrums. I don't know when I've enjoyed anything more than the last part of Elektra, that I didn't hear.
But his last works are not only spotty, but completely spineless as well, invertebrate masses upon which a few jewels, a few fine patches, gleam dully. "Salome" and "Elektra" had at least a certain dignity, a certain bearing.
It is a fact that good singing in the old-fashioned sense will help nobody out in Elektra, Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, Pelléas et Mélisande, or The Nightingale. These works are written in new styles and they demand a new technique. Put Mme. Melba, Mme. Destinn, Mme. Sembrich, or Mme. Galli-Curci to work on these scores and you will simply have a sad mess.
The music is ultra-Wagnerian, the finale genuine Strauss, with its swelling melos, its almost superhuman forcing of the emotional line to the ecstatic point. In Elektra, with the composer conducting, I again marvelled at the noisy, ineffective "reading" of a Hammerstein conductor, whose name I've forgotten. Yet New York has seen the best of Elektras, Mme.
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