Libretto by
Hugo von
Hofsmannthal
Conducted by
Colin Davis
Directed by
Christof Loy
Designed by
Herbert Murauer
The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Concert Master
Vasko Vassilev
The Major Domo
Christoph Quest
The Composer
Susan Graham
The Music Master
Dale Duesing
Zerbinetta
Diana Damrau
Prima Donna/
Ariadne
Anna Schwanewilms
Bacchus
Richard Margison
Dancing Master
John Graham-Hall
Singers
Ha Young Lee
Rachel Nichols
Christine Rice
Comedians
Grant Doyle
Jeremy White
Christopher Lemmings
Alasdair Elliott
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Ariadne auf Naxos
by Richard Strauss
Royal Opera
Covent Garden
22 June - 9 July 2004
Audiences love Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier; they have every reason to take as much delight in Ariadne auf Naxos, especially in this brilliantly staged and performed version. Director Christof Loy and designer Herbert Murauer show that if the highest stage arts are added to music as beautiful and rich, and a libretto as witty and profound, as Strauss and von Hofsmannthal respectively provide, the result is pure genius.
But that genius would find no expression without the performers, who by a mutual alchemy in this Covent Garden production make a superb team. Yet even among so much excellence, with the wonderfully accomplished Anna Schwanewilms singing Ariadne, there are two truly outstanding performances by Susan Graham as the Composer in The Prologue (i.e. Act I), and most wonderful of all, by Diana Damrau as Zerbinetta, who figures prominently in both The Prologue and The Opera (Act II), and who acts and sings with such magnificent verve, skill, intelligence and sexiness that she steals the show. There are scarcely words enough in the lexicon to praise her performance: the ease and joy with which she inhabited her immensely demanding role ravished the audience, who gave her a long ovation even before her challengingly complex coloratura passage in the middle of The Opera had reached its end.
There are two operas in one here, pitting comedy against tragedy to illustrate the holiness of music and the profanity of patronage. The story is set in the home of an immensely rich Viennese patron of the arts, who has commissioned three events an opera seria, an opera buffa, and a firework display to entertain his dinner guests. When the intense and dedicated young composer of the opera seria (a trouser role for mezzo soprano) learns that his work is to be followed by a Harlequinade, he is beside himself with rage, and rails against the insensitivity of philistine wealth. But when the patron's major domo announces that, to ensure that the firework display begins on time, the opera seria must be combined with the opera buffa, he cannot contain himself even when he begins to fall in love with Zerbinetta, the extrovert and down-to-earth buffa star.
Yet when the seria and the buffa combine as The Opera (Act II) the result is powerfully effective. Ariadne yearns for death on Naxos, her long, slow, lingering laments following a ravishing arched line which, even as it drips sorrow, attains rapture as she contemplates the release that death will bring. The buffa troupe enter as she sings, observing her and commenting on her sadness and isolation with sympathy at first, then with impatience and satire: except for Zerbinetta, whose virtuoso aria (more akin in style to bel canto than the luxuriant classicism of Ariadne's laments) explores a larger canvas than the single all-consuming and ultimately devastating love experienced by Ariadne: for Zerbinetta has loved often, and knows the faithlessness of men, and the yielding with which a woman greets 'each new god'.
When Bacchus arrives Ariadne begins by thinking he is the messenger of death, but then she responds to his love of her with the dawning of love in return, and they sing a long and beautiful duet to close.
This is a great opera; and this performance of it is one of the great opera events of the year. It must not be missed.
AC Grayling
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