FROM AROUND THE WORLD: LONG BEACH.(Review)

Of the many opera composers who have tried to evoke the cathartic effect of Greek tragedy, Richard Strauss may have been the most successful. Elektra is one hundred minutes of visceral pity and terror, exhausting but also deeply moving. The drama really does not require a contemporary setting to tell us we are watching an internecine struggle of murder and revenge, the fatal collapse of a dysfunctional family. Nevertheless, Long Beach Opera has a golden touch when it comes to updating the classics, and the company's recent production of Strauss's masterpiece, offered only four times, must be added to a lengthening list of astounding successes.

The vast stage of the Carpenter Center, shaped like a Cinemascope movie screen, was the perfect venue for director Roy Rallo's treatment of Elektra as a Technicolor melodrama, like Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life. Filling the entire space from side to side was a 1950s-style, glass-and-teakwood home full of Danish-modern furniture. Scenery designer Marsha Ginsberg didn't miss a single detail: a two-story vaulted living room with a tall, gray-rock fireplace (curiously decorated with animal-head trophies); sliding glass doors at the back opening onto a patio and swimming pool; a landing overlooking the living room; and several bedrooms, plus a special one isolated at the far end of the house for Elektra, the problem child. Though startling, this design for the House of Atreus was, frankly, spectacular, a great relief from the cliche of dim, dusty courtyards with their shattered statues of Agamemnon lying about.

LBO's biggest surprises, however, came in the form of three brilliant leading ladies -- soprano Susan Marie Pierson (Hektra), soprano Deidra Palmour (Chrysothemis) and mezzo ...