...can it work?  I hold tickets for an Opera North concert performance later this year, despite my disappointment that it was a concert performance, and the execrable acoustic at Leeds Town Hall.  I recall reading that it was because the orchestra wouldn't fit in the pit at the Grand...seems a bit implausible.  Am I wasting my hard-earned spondulix?

There certainly was - the opening night of the Proms one year in the mid-Nineties, conducted by Andrew Davis with Marilyn Zschau in the title role, Willard White as Orestes and the late Richard Cassilly, on walking sticks, as Aegisthus.  A terrific performance, IIRC, that overcame both the limitations of concert format and the Albert Hall acoustic.

As Ron writes, it is a very static work; I've seen it a few times but the performance that sticks in my mind, at Covent Garden with Gwyneth Jones giving an overwhelming performance in the title role, was notable for its stillness - especially in that great confrontation between Elektra and Orestes before they recognise one another.  It was one of Dame Gwyneth's good nights vocally as well - and on a good night, like Nilsson, considerate conductors were not something she needed to worry about - but above all she was a supreme actress; when she was on stage you simply could not take your eyes off her.  I saw her a number of times in various roles, and this IMO was one of her greatest. 

Edit, just to add:  In fact, I'm not sure I have ever seen a greater all-round operatic performance of anything, anywhere.

I've just discovered that the performance I was thinking of was the opening night of the 1993 Proms.  A sample of what was a great evening can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_NtbKsEbXA

But there was a concert performance of Elektra broadcast (I think) in 1996 (on a Sunday afternoon while my mum was doing the ironing - this means that I forever associate the work with the smell of freshly ironed sheets), conducted by Andrew Davis with Willard White as Orestes.
The backdrop was green as I recall, so it definitely wasn't this Proms performance.
(I think that was possibly the first time I heard White sing)
Overall I found it a very powerful, though disturbing experience. I really should go back to the work and listen to it properly some day soon.

Little anecdote, before I listen to that latest clip from PW:

In my second year at college our regular composition teacher was on leave for a term. Nicholas Maw was hauled in to fill the gap. He was SO obsessed by both Elektra and Salome that we could barely get him to look at our music.

'I'm having a problem with this extended cadential idea here. What should I do with this chord - it's just not working?'

'Ooh, that's like a situation in the Dance of the Seven Veils - let's see... here it is. I'll play the whole thing then we can talk about Strauss' approach to second inversion cadential strategies...'

'<grrrr>'

 

I recently got over a year-long obsession with Elektra. Whatever it's flaws (and there are many), it's to my mind one of the Great Moments of all opera.

FWIW, one of the things that is overpoweringly present in a live performance, but very rarely approximated in recordings, is the visceral effect of Strauss's mastery of orchestral timbre. I think of moments like the shift from a wind-dominated to a brass-dominated texture, combined with some peculiar registrational strategies, over a cadence, the first time she's all like "Agamemnon, Agamemnon" after her first entry. Or at Orest's first appearance, the way the orchestra exudes a sense of psychological rest (peace?) for the first time in the entire piece (an hour or so in...). Recordings articulate the 'sound' of the orchestration well enough, but not really the physiological effect of a 124-piece orchestra, virtuosically employed.