Richard Strauss’ 1909, second break-out opera Elektra just now was set in the same Greek antiquities museum as it had been in 2017. But that’s not the big news.
The first San Francisco Opera performance of Elektra was in 1938, the year before WWII broke out, Richard Strauss remaining in Germany for its duration. On average, since 1953, San Francisco Opera has mounted an Elektra every eight or so years, some more compelling than others.
Famed conductors have presided over the San Francisco Elektras — Fritz Reiner in 1938, Christian Thielemann in 1991. The Elektras have included Janis Martin, Gwyneth Jones, and most recently Christine Goerke, Leonie Rysanick was the Chrysothemis in 1979, Carol Neblett in 1984. The list of notable artists goes on and on.
In 1976 fabled San Francisco Opera General Director Kurt Herbert Adler expanded the orchestra pit to accommodate the 91 players needed for conductor Strauss’ Die Frau Ohne Schatten, enticing conductor Karl Böhm to come to San Francisco. It is that pit which housed just now the 95 players of conductor Eun Sun Kim’s Elektra orchestra.
The big news is that the most compelling of the last seven editions of Elektra is, surely, the one currently on stage at the War Memorial Opera House, its grandiose power emanating from the pit. Conductor Kim (lead photo) relishes big music and big singers — there is no bigger music than Strauss’ 100 minute Elektra. The glories of this virtuoso orchestral score shone forth brilliantly, its myriad colors and masses of sheer volume tell its very ugly story.
It is very beautiful music, but unlike bel canto that can tell ugly stories too, Strauss’ modernism finds its beauty in sonically colorful hues that intensify the human spirit in its most dreadful conflicts (while bel canto revels in the beautiful voices it uses to gloss over such conflict).
All this Strauss orchestral magnificence was indeed present for this Elektra! It was sustained by a cast that added enormous dimension to this retelling of Sophocle’s tale. Russian born Austrian dramatic soprano Elena Pankratova sang Elektra. Mme. Pankratova is in prime form vocally, and showed herself well capable of withstanding Elektra’s extended vocal tortures with appealing musicianship. If from time to time you wished for a bigger sound you got it when Strauss demanded it.
The defining voice of the production was that of South African born Elza van den Heever’s Chrysothemis. Mme. van den Heever, a San Francisco Opera finished artist, possesses a voice of great beauty, shining with a purity that befit Elektra’s sister who wants for nothing more than a real life outside the horrors of her household. Of towering vocal and physical stature her Chrysothemis became the standard against which Elektra and Klytemnestra’s phobias played.
Clytemnestra was sung by Austrian mezzo-soprano Michaela Schuster, who found the abject terror of the suffering, haunted wife of Agamemnon. Much more than a voiced performance is was a monumental display of a severely unbalanced woman, her monologue revealing her tortures, her scene with Elektra revealing her ugly, pitiful demands for help. In this staging she was deprived of the piercing scream she emits as she is murdered (provoking the question: Is the scream in the libretto?).
In the wake of the powerhouse expositions by Chrysothemis and Klytemnestra, the opera achieved an unexpected balance of forces, of which Elektra was but a part. Elektra became a player in the tragedy, not its perpetrator.
The matricide was effected by the Orest, sung by American bass baritone Kyle Ketelsen. Mr. Ketelsen is the Leporello of your dreams, though he has sung the Don at the Met and in Vienna. His Orest exuded the innocence of a younger brother who will meet the demands of his station, because they are programmed into his being. Mr. Ketelsen’s Orest evoked our sympathy for what ugliness was expected of him, hardly our congratulations for murdering his mother.
Tenor William Burden sang Aegisth. Mr. Burden well fulfilled the needs of this character role. In the Keith Warner production Aegisth is a pallid, pitiful second husband, not the aggressive seducer of Clytemnestra in the Greek myth or the monster as he is often played in the Strauss opera. Mr. Burden played George Bailey, the protagonist in Jake Heggie’s opera It’s a Wonderful Life.
British stage director Keith Warner’s production, first seen in Prague and then in Karlsruhe, was staged in San Francisco by Anja Kühnhold who staged it in 2017 as well. The staging precisely echoed the incisive, brutal and still moments of the Strauss score as musically effected by conductor Kim. The staging was at once meaningful, graceful and appropriate to these singers, perhaps motivated by the conducting.
The museum setting was overwhelmed by the musical personalities of the actors and the brilliance of the orchestral reading. Essentially the story we were supposed to imagine was that of a girl and her sister who visit an antiquities museum. Left alone in the museum, the girl, dressed in simple black clothing, imagines a family saga of colorfully and brilliantly dressed women (Mme. van den Heever in a blond wig) and a dutiful brother in a military jacket with epaulets. Interestingly the staging concludes with a projected image of Agamemnon being murdered in his bath, an image convincingly motivated by the Strauss score.
We in fact imagined a quite different story.
Additional credits: The five maid servants were Gabrielle Beteag, Sadie Cheslak, Laura Krumm, Mary Hoskins and Caroline Corrales. The overseer was Alexandra Loutsion, Klytemnestra’s confidants were Sofia Gotch and Alexa Frankian. The tutor of Orest was sung by Jongwon Han.
The off stage maid servants were blatantly over amplified during the opera’s initial moments, as was Orest’s tutor.
Michael Milenski
War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, California, June 11, 2026;
Lead photo copyright Stefan Cohen. Production photos copyright Cory Weaver, courtesy of San Francisco Opera.