I heard that I really had to hear Susan Bullock, new protagonist of the Metropolitan Opera revival of Richard Strauss' "Elektra," which had a season premiere on December 10, in a smaller opera house. Well, the Met, which is not a small house, was the one I heard her in, so-although at this, her debut, she might not have had the measure of the Met yet-this is the performance I have to consider. Maybe her Elektra will improve as she becomes more accustomed to singing here.

For now, however, I did not get the impression that Elektra, the most relentlessly strenuous role in the German repertory, was a natural fit for Bullock's relatively lyric instrument. The most successful aspects of her effort were the most lyrical ones-when she was toying with Felicity Palmer as her mother, Klytämnestra, before lashing out at her, and with Wolfgang Schmidt as her even more despised stepfather, Aegisth-whom she characterizes as a coward and something less than a man; when she was flattering Deborah Voigt as her sister, Chrysothemis-not to mention kissing her on the mouth-to try to coax her into helping to murder their mother; and in the melancholy first part of the scene with inky-voiced Evgeny Nikitin as her brother, Orest, before their mutual recognition. Her wild victory dance, rapturously clutching the axe Klytämnestra and Aegisth used to kill her father, Agamemnon, was also of note.

In the exchanges with Voigt, it was she and not Bullock, playing the sister who is supposed to be the stronger one, who displayed the broader, darker, more formidable tone, which threw off the desired balance. Yes, some of Voigt's top notes went awry-and we're still attempting to gauge the effect of her major weight loss on her voice-but many more of them made their mark impressively. Perhaps Bullock was pacing herself, in a role it may take a superhuman, such as Birgit Nilsson was, to realize without compromise, and Bullock's most significant scenes did crescendo, with passages that started subtly building to climaxes of greater power, but, too often, major statements got lost in the orchestra. Was this the fault of Fabio Luisi, leading the Met's players in a forceful and fully colorful account of the orchestral score? One always heard Voigt. And even when Bullock's climactic top tones were plainly audible, and her high Cs were quite bright, they did not sound like a dramatic soprano's high notes.

When Bullock and Palmer's scene together began, they sounded like two polite English ladies engaged in conversation, not like larger-than-live tragic figures tearing into each other. But Palmer was properly layering her performance and, by the time she got to the line "zerfressen von den Motten"-eaten up by moths-she was projecting the perfect picture of decadence and decay. The one time Palmer's disintegrating Queen allowed herself affectionate contact with her estranged daughter, Bullock immediately exploded it as she asked, "Lässt du den Bruder nicht nach Hause, Mutter?" (Wouldn't you allow my brother into the house, mother?), knowing how much Klytämnestra feared Orest would return to avenge his father's death. But when Klytämnestra got the false report of Orest's death, she laughed directly in Elektra's face to make sure her daughter missed none of the triumphant joy and relief she now felt.

Beside Elektra's final dance with the axe, another point worth mentioning, in David Kneuss' staging of Otto Schenk's 1992 production, was Orest's tears in the recognition scene, showing that it was not unalloyed joy that brother and sister shared, but also sobering tragedy. John Easterlin and Kevin Burdette (debut) offered a memorable moment as the brash young servant and the old retainer, loyal to Orest, who interrupted Elektra and Chrysothemis' second scene together. Tamara Mumford, Heidi Melton (debut), Maria Zifchak, Wendy Bryn Harmer, and Jennifer Check made a strong quintet of serving women, with Check, as the single one sympathetic to Elektra, and Susan Neves, as their harsh overseer, delivering particularly striking contributions. Oren Gradus, as Orest's guardian, and Rosemary Nencheck and Alexandra Newland, as Klytämnestra's confidante and trainbearer, completed the cast.

Repetitions of "Elektra" are slated for December 15, 18, 22 and 29 at 8 p.m. and 26 at 1 p.m. For tickets, priced from $15 to 375, telephone 212/362-6000, visit www.metopera.org, or go the Met box office at Lincoln Center. Rush tickets, for $20, are available at the box office on the day of performance, from Monday through Thursday.