Ms Mattila, you last sang Clytemnestra at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2023.
And it was my first time in the role, too! Donald Runnicles called me and asked if I was up for singing Clytemnestra in Berlin. At the time I was booked for a new production of ELEKTRA at the Royal Opera in London, so I was swotting up on the role anyway. Sadly when it came to the evening, Runnicles was ill, but it was amazing for me because I’d been waiting almost 30 years to sing the part.

You’ll have to elaborate on that.
My first contact with ELEKTRA was in 1995, when I sang Chrysothemis, Elektra’s sister, in a lovely production in Salzburg. Claudio Abbado had to persuade me to do it. I was 34. I’d done a lot of lyrical stuff but not many dramatic parts. I was in awe of the sheer volume of a Strauss opera and was petrified that the orchestra would drown me out. Claudio calmed me down and assured me I’d always be audible, and so it turned out. Everything in the female voices was clear and distinct, it was gorgeous. And then when Marjana Lipovsek, Clytemnestra, rose up beside me and sang »ich habe keine guten Nächte mehr« with that dark voice of hers, I thought »Wow, I want to sing that one day«. I spent years singing Chrysothemis, at the Met, in London, all over the world, but I always had one eye on Clytemnestra!

What makes Clytemnestra so special?
It’s the musical depth, her character. She’s not a crowd pleaser. She’s on edge, you could say a bit unbalanced. Everyone thinks she’s a murderess, but she actually has many sides to her personality.

Are evil characters more interesting to sing?
It comes down to depth and complexity. No one’s either good or bad in a binary way. You have to appreciate Clytemnestra’s back story to understand her. Why do we think she murdered Agamemnon? He’s a horrible man. First he sacrifices his daughter, then he returns home from war with a lover on his arm. So from Clytemnestra’s viewpoint things are very different. And I now get to approach the role through her eyes.

In ELEKTRA the mother is pitted against her daughter. Does it help being a mother oneself?
I don’t have children, so my response would be »No«. You don’t have to be a queen to play a queen. For Clytemnestra you should have a certain level of maturity and life experience, so that the madness of the character has some space to flex. And of course you need the voice!

ELEKTRA is known as the battle of the sopranos. How does that feel up there on stage?
Powerful, mad, crazy. Everything’s highly charged and buzzing. I love this opera.

And how does the stage itself feel? Everyone’s wading knee-deep in cork granules.
It’s tiring and uncomfortable and unpleasant. The stage set-up is a perfect metaphor for the situation the characters are in: they’re wading through the slurry of their family history. Every movement is a challenge. Everything we do onstage is a job of work. So it’s a very authentic production – for us and the audience.