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The Metropolitan Opera's production of "Elektra," which returned for its first performance of the season last night, follows Strauss beyond the grotesque into the realm of pure ugliness, and it takes impressive singing to redeem the hour and forty-five minutes that the single-act work takes up. The Met had such singing this time in the title role and elsewhere, and in Heinrich Hollreiser offered a conductor who knew how to keep the score driving ahead from climax to climax without breaking the dramatic line. It was Mr. Hollreiser's Met debut, as it was too of another newcomer, the Yugoslavian dramatic soprano Danica Mastilovic, a Birgit Nilsson look-alike in this role, whose voice also at times bore uncanny resemblances to Miss Nilsson's bright sword of an instrument.

Miss Mastilovic is one of those large women who is not afraid to dance, but that did not make her final, demented dance really convincing. The rule of thumb is that Elektras can either sing the part or dance it, and it is a rule seldom broken. The voice, not a warm or notably subtle one, is more reliable at the top than in the middle or lower ranges, and it frequently is produced with an odd lower-rear-wisdom-tooth placement that gives Miss Mastilovic a sneering look. That, as it happened, fit the part of the madwoman of Mycenae. What did not please, however, was a wide tremolo, often slipping over into a wobble, that disfigured many tones that had to be sustained under pressure. It is a big voice, however, that carried over even the heaviest bombardments that the orchestra laid down, and Miss Mastilovic's rather primitive acting style was almost tolerable, on balance.

Astrid Varnay, singing her first Met Klytamnestra, confronted her deranged daughter with a demented grandeur of her own, making the old queen a kind of Pique Dame misplaced into mythological times. Her voice served surprisingly well at times, but this was fine character acting rather than first-rate singing.

Paired with Miss Mastilovic and more than matching her in vocal and dramatic ability was Teresa Kubiak as Chrysothemis. Persuasively pliant and gentle, Miss Kubiak managed to deliver the heroically stentorian tones required of her firmly and beautifully without losing credibility as a weak sister. Moreover, there was character and finesse to each ringing tone, not merely an outpouring of penetrating sound.

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