On 6, 7 and 25 May, Richard Strauss' masterpiece Elektra returns to the Mariinsky Theatre and the Russian stage. Almost one century ago it was the Mariinsky Theatre that introduced the Russian public to Strauss' operatic works with Vsevolod Meyerhold and Alexander Golovin's production of Elektra. The new production is being prepared by renowned British director Jonathan Kent. The production designer is Paul Brown, the lighting designer is Tim Mitchell and the musical director and conductor is Valery Gergiev.

The world premiere of Richard Strauss' one-act opera Elektra after the tragedy of the same name by Hugo von Hofmannsthal took place in 1909 in Dresden. The opera soon entered the repertoires of all of Europe's leading opera houses.

Strauss' Elektra was one of the works that paved the way for atonal music in the 20th century. But later the composer himself wrote that if he had known what consequences it would have for contemporary music he would never "have got involved in the affair". Later Strauss admitted: "Next time I will write an opera in the spirit of Mozart".

The Mariinsky was the first Russian theatre to stage Elektra – Vsevolod Meyerhold and designer Alexander Golovin's production was premiered here in 1913. The opera was performed just three times.

Director Jonathan Kent is now working on the new production of Elektra. In opera, he has staged Puccini's Tosca at Covent Garden, and future plans include Britten's The Turn of the Screw for the Glyndebourne Festival. Initially Jonathan Kent gained fame as Artistic Director of the Almeida drama theatre in London. Over twelve years there he has staged productions including Dryden's All for Love, Euripides' Medea (also performed in the West End and on Broadway), Chatsky (new version by Anthony Burgess after Griboyedov's comedy Woe from Wit), Moliere's L'ecole des maris and Tartuffe, Shakespeare's The Tempest, Richard II, Coriolanus, King Lear and Hamlet, Racine's Phedre and Britannicus and Wedekind's Lulu.

Jonathan Kent on the premiere: "Strauss and von Hofmannsthal have created a work of raw emotional power and psychological violence. It is no coincidence that three years after the premiere of their opera in 1909, Jung coined the phrase "the Elektra complex". Elektra is trapped in the obsessive love for her dead father and the equally obsessive need to keep faith with the past and a lust for revenge. Her tragedy is that she is held forever in a state of opposition, unable to move on from his death and to accommodate life. Almost her final words are "Liebe totet! Aber keiner fahrt dahin und hat die Liebe nicht gekannt" (Love kills! But no one dies without knowing love).
Strauss saw his opera as a "vehicle for emotion" and all three women – Elektra, Chrysothemis, her sister, and Klytemnestra, her mother – are held in a violent and agonising suspension by one terrible act, the murder of Agamemnon, which takes place before the opera begins.
By making this production contemporary – yet setting it in a style moderne palace, the architecture of Strauss – we hope to preserve the mythic status of the story while allowing it the complexity of our modern awareness.".

The premiere is being rehearsed by Larisa Gogolevskaya, Milena Kotlyar, Irina Vasilieva, Mlada Khudolei, Elena Vitman, Olga Savova, Vasily Gorshkov, Maxim Aksenov, Oleg Balashov, Vadim Kravets, Eduard Tsanga, Edem Umerov and other soloists of the Mariinsky Theatre and the Academy of Young Singers.