Elektra by Richard Strauss Metropolitan Opera, April 3, 1992 Metropolitan Opera House You'd imagine that little worse could happen to a production of Elektra than to have the singer in the title role pull up sick and send in an understudy. But when Hildegard Behrends left the role to Penelope Daner last night, there was nothing to complain about at all. The NYT wrote the day before that Daner's sudden substitution earlier in the week (told Monday that she would be singing the Tuesday show) left the Met believing it had discovered a significant new leading soprano. Although she expected to get only that start, she was in the role again for our show Friday evening, and to me she showed strength, poise and talent in singing the demanding role. That said, the opera was difficult for me. While there were moments of obvious, deep emotional content, I can't say that I really tracked all the subtle demensions that the work is said to portray. I hadn't read the libretto or ever heard the opera before, and having read a couple of plot sumamries just didn't equip me to follow all the inner turbulence. I had wondered whether the under-preparation would let me experience the opera essentially unmarked-that is, I could simply let it wash over me and see how that felt for a change. The answer is that it felt unsatisfying. Absent even the supratitles to guide me along, I often felt that I just wasn't getting enough out of the opera to be happy with. There were exceptional moments, and overall the 100-minutes left me emotionally tuned, feelings sharpened and ready-but not fully engaged. I greatly enjoyed the singing of Deborah Voight (Chrysothemis), whose voice I thought far better than Daner's. She is a very fat woman who nonetheless brought emotional range and appeal to the role. Leonie Rysanek (Klytämenstra) was emotionally satisfying in that role. I found Bernd Weikl (Orest) a little bewildered for an avenging brother; he sang blandly and mainly stood around. James King (Aegisth) seemed inappropriatley almost comic in his brief appearance. I remember noting when I saw Salome that it was asking a great deal of Eva Marton for her to sing the role and also dance the dance of the seven veils. I wondered again at the end of this opera what Strauss had in mind by specifying a strange little "dance of death" for Elektra at the end. Daner looked silly stamping around stiffly after an hour and a-half of roiling emotion. I read in a review that Behrends had done a dance that "in any other context would have been slapstick." Why do we ask these world-class sopranos to do that? Others: Conducted by James Levine; production by Otto Schenk; set and costumne, Jürgen Rose.