ELEKTRA

Just when you thought it was unsafe to return to the Music Center Opera, along comes “Elektra,” and matters are again on the mend. The company’s new production of Richard Strauss’ one-act mix of shock and shlock, unveiled Saturday night for the first of four performance, might have its flaws, but they rank as virtues compared to some of last fall’s shenanigans. Note well, for starters, that director David Pountney has hit upon the noteworthy scheme, apparently rare these days, of setting his production in the time and place — post-Trojan War Greece — specified by Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto: no updating to Fresno in the 1980s. John Bury’s set takes a few liberties; the ruined statue of Agamemnon in the foreground sports a rather modernistic war helmet. But the designs are otherwise mostly abstract, and the great palace facade, with its menacing flight of stairs slashed across the front, looks appropriately timeless. More remarkably, this set serves the opera’s title character, the crazed and murderous Elektra, as a wonderful jungle gym. Marilyn Zschau, in the mounting frenzy that is the opera’s dramatic thread, is all over the place, dashing up and down the staircase, acting out her final dance of ecstasy while swinging from some conveniently placed ropes, expiring at the end cuddled into the dismembered hand of that statue of her murdered father. All this would be fun enough to watch, but Zschau goes one further. Anyone who remembers her fabulous Renata in the company’s Fiery Angel” some years back knows that when it comes to giving voice to unbridled hysteria, nobody else in opera can touch her. And so it was again. There was nothing much to ravish the ear in Zschau’s Elektra; it’s a hard voice, with a jagged cutting edge. As such, it is a tremendous vehicle for Strauss’ steamy protagonist. This is an Elektra as the role was conceived. Then there is that Chrysothemis of Ealynn Voss, that towering talent (in any sense of the term), simply stupendous in her company debut, remarkable in the sound of her voice and, even more surprising, in the naturalness and grace of her acting. Helga Dernesch is an uncommonly interesting Klytemnestra, not the grotesque monster the character is often made out to be, but a woman in believable human torment. Rodney Gilfry’s leather-boy Orest, in a silly red hairdo, and Gary Bachlund’s Aegisthus round out the cast acceptably. Lawrence Foster conducted, veteran of many Music Center productions, star of none. He made his way tidily through the tangles of Strauss’ murderous orchestration, to be sure, but added little in the way of eloquence. Love this music or loathe it — and there are potent arguments on both sides — there are moments in the score that light up the sky, or should in a properly motivated performance. This Elektra” was pure Lawrence Foster, competent and correct, its glow steady but dim.