ABSTRACT
It was at the age of 30 that Hofmannsthal turned to Greek drama for the subjects of three plays: Elektra, Oedipus and the Sphinx and Oedipus the King. Hofmannsthal begins his play on Elektra quite differently from Sophocles: he ‘follows’ the Greek ‘act’ by rendering it freely. He no longer opens with Orestes and Pylades; there is no immediate invocation of the gods, no inexorable, framing strategy. Rather, he places the readers at once inside the palace and tells the story from the viewpoint of those who are in the dark. In this case study of a one-act opera, Elektra, we need to ask how the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal ‘followed’ his primary source – Sophocles’ Elektra (an egregiously successful act) – as well as what acts the composer, Richard Strauss, had to follow.
