58, is a one-act opera by Richard Strauss, to a German-language libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal,[1] which he adapted from his 1903 drama Elektra.

[2] While based on ancient Greek mythology and Sophocles' tragedy Electra, the opera is highly modernist and expressionist in style.

Compared to Sophocles's Electra, the opera presents raw, brutal, violent, and bloodthirsty horror.

[5] Norwegian musicologist Ståle Wikshåland has analysed the use of time and temporality in the dramaturgy of Elektra.

[6] Elektra is the second of Strauss's two highly modernist operas (the other being Salome),[7][full citation needed] characterized by cacophonous sections and atonal leitmotifs.

[10] The first United States performance of the opera in the original German was given by the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company at the Academy of Music on 29 October 1931, with Anne Roselle in the title role, Charlotte Boerner as Chrysothemis, Margarete Matzenauer as Klytaemnestra, Nelson Eddy as Orest, and Fritz Reiner conducting.

[11] Before the opera begins, Agamemnon has sacrificed Iphigenia on the ruse that she is to be married, and subsequently goes off to war against Troy.

After his return, with the help of her paramour Aegisth, she murders her husband and now is afraid that her crime will be avenged by her other children, Elektra, Chrysothemis, and their banished brother Orest.

Elektra has managed to send her brother away while remaining behind to keep her father's memory alive, but all the while, suffering the scorn of her mother and the entire court.

[13] Elektra comes back for her daily ritual in memory of her father, who upon his return from Troy was killed while bathing by Klytaemnestra and Aegisth and dragged out into the courtyard.

Elektra now starts imagining the day when her father will be avenged and then of the ensuing celebration in which she will lead the triumphal dance.

Unlike Elektra, she is meek and accommodating, and has remained on decent terms with Klytaemnestra and Aegisth.

When she tells her that she heard it at the Queen's door, Elektra screams that there is nothing to find in this house but death.

As loud sounds are heard inside, Elektra mocks her sister that it is her wedding party.

She asks the gods for the reason for her burdens, but Elektra appeases her by telling her mother that she is a goddess herself.

Elektra teases her mother with little pieces of information about the right victim that must be slain, but she changes the conversation to her brother and why he is not allowed back.

Angered by this, Klytaemnestra goes off on an insane tirade, telling Elektra that she would give the proper information for a rite and sacrificial victim if she were starved.

Elektra does not relent and a terrified Chrysothemis listens as her sister demands that she help her to avenge their father.

Elektra goes on to praise her sister and her beauty, promising that she shall become Chrysothemis's slave at her bridal chamber in exchange for the assistance in her task.

Elektra, eerily dancing with a torch, happily ushers him inside the palace, reassuring him of her new change of heart.

The bitonal or extended Elektra chord is a well known dissonance from the opera while harmonic parallelism is also a prominent modernist technique.

[15] To support the overwhelming emotional content of the opera, Strauss uses an immense orchestra of about 110—one of the largest in opera—with the following instrumentation:[16] In addition to the massive orchestral forces and the large principal cast of singers, a full chorus is briefly used at the end of the opera from "Stimmen hinter der Scene" ("voices behind the scene") calling out the arrival of Orestes from within the Palace following the murder of Aegisth.

[17] The characters in Elektra are characterized in the music through leitmotifs or chords including the Elektra chord, a polychord consisting of E major and C# major stacked on top of each other, building a chain of thirds accompanied by added thirds on top.