Richard Strauss' ELEKTRA with Eun Sun Kim Will Come to San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera will present Richard Strauss' 1909 masterwork Elektra from June 7–27. Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim conducts the San Francisco Opera Orchestra in this tense, one-act thriller which requires one of the largest pit orchestras of any work in the operatic repertoire. Keith Warner's popular staging, which updates the action to a contemporary museum, is directed by Anja Kühnhold and features an international cast.

Elektra was the first collaboration between composer Richard Strauss and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the artistic partnership that produced such 20th-century operas as Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Arabella. Elektra reimagines Sophocles' classic Greek tragedy as a suspenseful, psychological drama. Strauss' score utilizes more than 100 instruments in the pit to create dense harmonies and thundering rhythms that build tension throughout the opera's compact, 1-hour 45-minute duration.

Keith Warner's production is set in a museum where a young woman is inadvertently trapped overnight. Surrounded by an exhibit about ancient Greece and the House of Atreus, the woman's past traumas find expression in the cycle of violence that engulfed Agamemnon and his family during and after the Trojan War. The updated vision for Strauss and Hofmannsthal's opera resonated so strongly with Bay Area audiences when it was introduced here in 2017 that attendees returned for multiple performances. “I've seen Elektra before, several times, but this production, which I loved, is so detailed and thought-provoking (and emotion-provoking) that it repays repeated views,” said one repeat attendee in a report by San Francisco Classical Voice. Warner's staging features the work of Boris Kudlička (set designer), Kaspar Glarner (Costume Designer), John Bishop (lighting designer) and Bartek Macias (projection designer). Chorus Director John Keene prepares the San Francisco Opera Chorus.

Last fall, San Francisco Opera Music Director Eun Sun Kim won considerable praise for the Company's new production of Wagner's Parsifal: “The orchestra under Eun Sun Kim combined delicacy and Wagnerian power in a way that was both intimate and monumental” (San Francisco Chronicle). Kim is currently in the midst of a Straussian year. Prior to leading her first-ever performances of Elektra in San Francisco, she conducted Richard Strauss' Ein Heldenleben with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Ariadne auf Naxos with Berlin's Staatsoper Unter den Linden. During San Francisco Opera's 2026–27 Season, she conducts Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, Massenet's Manon and Wagner's Das Rheingold, along with an all-Strauss concert on November 6 featuring the composer's early tone poem Till Eulenspiegel, Brentano Lieder and a new suite of music from Der Rosenkavalier.

Elena Pankratova makes her Company debut in the formidable title role. The Russian soprano has performed Elektra on many of opera's leading stages, including in Vienna, Amsterdam, Dresden, Lyon and Naples. The Opera Critic said her portrayal is “… youthfully feminine, and captures one's empathy from her first ‘Allein' in a reading well-detailed, punctuated with exemplary diction, and captivating in insight.” Pankratova's American engagements to date have included the title role in Puccini's Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera and Kundry in Parsifal with Houston Grand Opera, the latter under Eun Sun Kim's baton.

Elektra's sister Chrysothemis is performed by Elza van den Heever. Last seen on the War Memorial Opera House stage in Mozart's Idomeneo (June 2025) and Beethoven's Fidelio (October 2021)—both conducted by Eun Sun Kim—van den Heever is one of today's foremost sopranos on the opera stage today. The New York Observer said of her Salome at the Metropolitan Opera, “We're also living in the age of Elza van den Heever, whom I suspect is the most outstanding Strauss soprano of her generation … she opens her mouth and out pours rivers of controlled, sparkling and nuanced sound.” Van den Heever enjoys deep musical roots in San Francisco, including as a former San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow, Merola Opera Program participant and San Francisco Conservatory of Music graduate.

Michaela Schuster returns to the Company to take on the role of Elektra's embattled mother, Klytemnestra. Schuster made her memorable house debut during San Francisco Opera's 2022–23 Centennial Season as Madame de Croissy in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. The San Francisco Chronicle reported, “The meat of this role is an extravagantly long and ferocious death scene that concludes the first of the opera's three acts, and Schuster delivered it with an unforgettable combination of arching vocal power and emotional turmoil.”

Bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen, last seen with the Company as Escamillo in Carmen in 2019, portrays Elektra's long-lost brother and would-be avenger, Orest. During the run of Elektra, Ketelsen performs in recital on June 16 at the Barbro Osher Recital Hall with San Francisco Opera Center Artistic Director and pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson and six participants in the 2026 Merola Opera Program. For tickets and more information about the recital, visit sfopera.com/srs.

Since 1992, William Burden has portrayed a diverse array of roles with San Francisco Opera, including Laca in Janáček's Jenůfa, Captain Vere in Britten's Billy Budd and George Bailey in Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer's It's a Wonderful Life. This season he makes his role debut as Klytemnestra's lover and accomplice, Aegisth.

San Francisco Opera has presented Elektra in ten previous seasons beginning in 1938 when conductor Fritz Reiner conducted one of the past century's ideal interpreters, Hungarian soprano Rose Pauly. The orchestra pit of the still-new War Memorial Opera House (which opened in October 1932) had to be enlarged to accommodate the near-100 instrumentalists that Strauss' score calls for in Elektra. The added space, which extends 4' under the stage and spans the length of the pit, is today called the “Torpedo Room” for how it resembles the inside of a submarine. A contemporary performance use for the Torpedo Room can be seen in the 2024 film Eun Sun Kim: A Journey Into Lohengrin (at the 37-minute mark).

2026 Theater Fans' Choice Awards - Live Stats

Best Off-Broadway Play - Top 3

1. A Christmas Carol (Thorne Adaptation) - PAC NYC

7% of votes

2. Prince F****t - Playwrights Horizons

6.3% of votes

3. Kenrex - Lucille Lortel Theatre

5% of votes

Vote Now! View Live Stats