Naples.(In Reviews: from around the world: International - Elektra)(Opera Review)

The new production of Elektra--the first here in forty-seven years--that inaugurated the season at the San Carlo was designed by the remarkable German artist and sculptor Anselm Kiefer, who was making his opera debut. A rectangular space surrounded by four tiers of concrete containers with multiple doorways made for a setting that was at once neutral and intriguing, and which mirrored in a certain sense the more traditional tiered structure of the auditorium. The pale gray containers and mainly white costumes lent a not inappropriate Mediterranean luminosity to this Greek drama, usually shrouded in darkness, and it was refreshing to he able to read the characters' emotions on the singers' faces and decipher clearly the action devised by director Klaus Michael Gruber, who is expert at using archetypal gestures of alienation, mourning and exaltation to telling effect.

As Elektra, Gabriele Schnaut was a dominating presence throughout: a compelling psychological ...