The story of "Elektra"

Devastated several years before by the murder of her father, Agamemnon, at the hands of his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, Electra can think of nothing but revenge. Her hope is that her brother, Orestes, will return to Mycenae from exile and kill the killers. Her more softhearted sister, Chrysothemis, who wants only a normal life with a husband and children, pleads with her to give up the obsession that is keeping both of them prisoner in the palace.

Clytemnestra, tormented by nightmares, tries to enlist Electra's help. What blood sacrifice, she asks, can free her from her dreams? In a scene full of insinuating double meanings, Electra gradually reveals that the blood must be Clytemnestra's own.

At this point, a false report of Orestes' death, seeming to remove the threat of his return, is brought to Clytemnestra. Electra refuses to believe it, and indeed the messengers turn out to be Orestes himself, now covertly returning, and his tutor. After an emotional reunion with his sister, Orestes enters the palace and kills Clytemnestra. Aegisthus, returning home, is gleefully lighted into the palace by Electra and killed in his turn.

Having shed kindred blood, Orestes faces an uncertain future; in most versions of the myth, he is pursued by the Furies, but eventually, on grounds of extenuating circumstances, acquitted in a formal trial by the casting vote of the goddess Athene — an epoch-making moment of progress in human morality. Electra is less fortunate. The release of years of hatred and the sudden euphoria at the completed acts of vengeance prove too much for her, and at the height of her dance of victory she falls dead.

— Bernard Jacobson