STRAUSS : ARIADNE AUF NAXOS

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 22nd of May 2011 at 3.03 - 6 pm
Sunday 14th of March 2010 at 3 - 6 pm

INTRODUCTION
COMPOSER
BACKGROUND
UNDERGROUND
CHARACTERS
SYNOPSIS
STORYLINE
ANALYSIS


STRAUSS: Ariadne auf Naxos, two acts with a prologue.
Strauss and Hofmannsthal wrote a one-act opera based on the legend of Ariadne to be performed following a production of Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, but the evening’s entertainment proved to be far too long. Hofmannsthal then devised his own prologue and this version premièred in Vienna in October of 1916 with Lotte Lehmann as the Composer.
Ariadne......................... Anna Tomowa-Sintow
Zerbinetta..................... Kathleen Battle
Harlequin...................... Urban Malmberg
Scaramuccio.................. Josef Protschka
Truffaldino.................... Kurt Rydl
Brighella........................ Hans Sojer
Composer..................... Agnes Baltsa
Music Master................ Hermann Prey
Bacchus......................... Gary Lakes
Dancing Master............. Heinz Zednik
Wigmaker...................... Günter von Kannen
Footman....................... Alfred Sramek
Officer........................... Ewald Aichberger
Major Domo.................. Otto Schenk
Najade.......................... Barbara Bonney
Dryade.......................... Helga Müller Molinari
Echo.............................. Dawn Upshaw
Vienna Phil/James Levine (DG 419 225)

Something went wrong with the programming in 2011: instead of the performance with Joyce DiDonato (which was promised to us in an interview with her on the preceding Sunday) we were offered this Vienna version (Hermann Prey is dead, Kathleen Battle does not sing at the NY Metropera any more, or anywhere?).

Ariadne on [the island] Naxos is possibly the greatest of the Strauss operas (see Father Owen Lee under UNDERGROUND) yet Denis Forman awards it Gamma (that's the letter after A and B, equivalent to C in grading): he admits the music is wonderful, and Thomas Beecham agreed (Ariadne's longing for death is affecting,  her love duet with Bacchus is overwhelming, Zerbinetta's piece is a cracker, and the waltz is great), but he is dismayed that it has been wasted on such a crackpot show; anything our imagination can conjure up while we listen will be better than what is presented on the stage, says Forman (and he's the boss).

My recordings of the two parts are old monophonic: Clemens Kraus conducts the Vienna Philharmonic gentlemen in the incidental music to Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme; for Ariadne (1955) Herbert von Karajan has the Philharmonia Orchestra to play with, and Walter Legge sits imperiously but artisticly (sic) in the producer's chair, so his wife Elisabeth Schwarzkopf gets the main parts (she is singing to me as I write) as the Prima Donna in the prolog and Ariadne in the opera. Other illustrious names on the cast list are Irmgaard Seefried, Rita Streich, Rudolf Schock, Hugues Cuénod, Hermann Prey, Gerhard Unger, and more.

2010
Ariadne......................... Nina Stemme
Zerbinetta...................... Kathleen Kim
Composer..................... Sarah Connolly
Bacchus........................ Lance Ryan
Music Master................ Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Najade.......................... Anne-Carolyn Bird
Dryade.......................... Tamara Mumford
Echo............................. Erin Morley
Dancing Master............. Tony Stevenson
Brighella........................ Sean Panikkar
Scaramuccio................. Mark Schowalter
Harlequin...................... Markus Werba
Truffaldino..................... Joshua Bloom
Lackey.......................... James Courtney
Officer.......................... Dennis Petersen
Wigmaker..................... David Crawford
Major-Domo................ Michael Devlin
Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Kirill Petrenko
REVIEW
In this performance the Composer is Sarah Connolly, who made a great impression at the Last Night of the Proms (2009), singing (in the presence of her 6-year-old daughter and thousands of other relatives and admirers) Dido's Lament (Purcell), They can't take that away from me (Gershwin), and Rule Britannia (Arne) in a Lord Nelson uniform and with a spyglass; here she is again in another trouser-role.