Christine Goerke calls her title role in Richard Strauss’s Elektra 'a gift' of her career.Arielle Doneson/COC
In recent seasons, American soprano Christine Goerke has included in her calendar a near-annual mid-winter northern trek to sing on the stage of Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre. She brought her celebrated Brunnhilde to the Canadian Opera Company’s productions of Die Walkure (2015), Siegfried (2016) and Gotterdammerung (2017); this month, she shifts gears, moving from the expanse of Wagner to the dense immediacy of Richard Strauss’s Elektra.
Not every soprano gets to sink her teeth into the challenges of this title role, and after spending more than 10 years with this opera, Goerke calls it “a gift of my career.” With the trifecta of gripping music, power-wielding women and a climactic dance break, it’s no mystery that Goerke never tires of Elektra.
Compared with the marathon of singing five-hour-long Wagner roles, are the 100 minutes of Strauss’s Elektra like a sprint?
A really, really, really long sprint! You do not have an opportunity to let up. Even when you have an opportunity to shut up, you cannot let up for a moment. The drama moves so quickly, the music moves swiftly and you never feel like you’re settled. I’m nervous when it starts. I take a second to think: This is a huge thing, a gigantic undertaking. And then when the music starts, I don’t stop until I’m on the floor. There are no breaks. There are no breaks until it’s done. I never find a deer-in-the-headlights moment in this piece, ever.
After 10 years of performing this opera, do you ever get tired of it?
No way. I am completely in love with this score. It starts so abruptly, it grabs you. This piece in particular carries me along, as well as the audience. It’s a vast richness that you get to wander into, and the ride is amazing.
When I’m not singing, I do feel like an audience member – this piece carries me along. I become part of what the other characters are telling me. For me, I love that. I love to chew scenery, to react to other people. Within reason, I don’t do the same thing twice. I pay attention to what’s given to me, and respond to it. If you do that, you can’t really phone it in.
Why does everyone deem Elektra to be “crazy”?
“Crazy” is always the word that’s associated with Elektra, but “damaged” is the word I prefer to use. She’s a damaged child. She is as weak as she is obsessed, obsessed with justice for her father, but she cannot accomplish it. There are moments where she goes in and out of abject despair, and more than “crazy,” I hear despair and anger in the score.
It seems to me – at the risk of using terminology that makes me sick to my stomach – that all these other women who talk about Elektra running around like a crazy dog is fake news. In fact, everyone else is crazy, and Elektra is absolutely with it and knows what’s going on.
What is it like to step into a role so vocally and dramatically taxing?
This career is way cheaper than therapy. I get paid to let go of all this stuff out onstage. That’s our job, to reach in and grab all the nasty stuff from our whole life, and put it on the stage and say, “Here you go.”
In order to do this role successfully, you have to walk the line the entire evening. One of the hardest – and greatest – things about our instrument is that it’s attached to our body, our emotions, our soul. Singing Elektra is about pacing myself, and not allowing my emotion to get too close to the voice.
In Elektra, you get to feel every single emotion that you can feel, and it’s such a rush to let all of that out. If I do my job the right way, I am exhausted at the end, and hopefully the audience is, too. For me, the adrenaline of singing Elektra lasts for about an hour and a half after the show, and then I’ll fall asleep in my soup.
Do you have any tricks for keeping Elektra’s final dance fresh?
I take requests! I told the director [James Robinson], if you have any requests, you should probably get them in now, because they fill up fast. I already promised to work in Elaine’s kicking from Seinfeld; I have worked in the sprinkler, the shopping cart. The macarena was very easy to work in.
At opening night of the Elektra we did this past year at the Met, the prompter said, “Can you make it rain?” Later, my daughter asked, “Mom, did you make it rain?” I said, “No! That would be unprofessional!”
Why do you consider Elektra a good choice for first-time opera-goers?
Elektra turns so many people on to opera. It’s so cool. There’s nothing that’s going to make you think, “This is for my grandparents.” Before you have a chance to think, the music tells you how to feel – that’s how great music works.
A lot of people do come to this as their first opera. For people who have never been before, I would love them to come to this, and see that opera is not anything like what you think it is.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
The Canadian Opera Company’s Elektra runs in Toronto from Jan. 26 to Feb. 22 (coc.ca).