Richard Strauss’ ‘opera within an opera’ Ariadne auf Naxos, has at its heart an audacious reconciliation of high art with low comedy. It’s a difficult act to pull off but, in Glyndebourne’s most recent version, it succeeds apparently effortlessly.
The plot is simple, if somewhat ridiculous. The wealthiest man in Vienna has an evening of entertainment ahead for his dinner guests. It comprises both a tragic opera set in antiquity about the highest moral virtues and a commedia dell’arte troupe who specialise in broad humour and innuendo. At the last moment, the host decides that the two pieces will have to run simultaneously so the firework display will not be delayed. What could possibly go wrong?
Alina Wunderlin as Zerbinetta and Samantha Hankey as the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos
The opera composer (Samantha Hankey, tortured delightfully by her genius in an over-sized suit) is outraged at the very idea while Zerbinetta (a show-stealing Alina Wunderlin who manages perfect coloratura while dressed in a corset and suspenders) is all for it. She and her troupe, she reasons, can improvise around the opera and liven it up a bit. Zerbinetta’s charms overcome the composer’s objections and – though concerns about musical integrity and the moral purity of his piece still haunt him – the deal is done and the revised and improvised version of Ariadne auf Naxos is Act II.
And somehow everything works. The tragedy of the opera itself is not diminished, due in no small part to the creamy-voiced Rachel Willis-Sørensen’s Ariadne who is quite glorious and inhabits her role to perfection. Zerbinetta and her white-faced clowns don’t drag proceedings down to mere farce as is often the case in productions of this opera and instead become a commentary that is both unexpectedly sympathetic to Ariadne’s plight yet genuinely witty.
Brighella (Liam Bonthrone), Harlequin (Mikhail Timoshenko), Truffaldino (Liam James Karai), Scaramuccio (Caspar Singh) and Zerbinetta (Alina Wunderlin)
This being Strauss, there are moments of quite sublime music and not only for the principals. The Naiad, Dryad and Echo trio (Anna Denisova, Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein and Eirin Rognerud) shimmer in diaphanous robes, their voices equally lustrous. David Butt Philip’s main appearance is only at the very end of the opera but he then displayed his fine tenor in the ravishing duet with Ariadne. And William Relton in the speaking Major-Domo role was delightfully impish in his manipulation of the entertainers.
The stage throughout is dominated by a pair of massive rococo doors that move across a stage that is otherwise comparatively bare in Massimo Troncanetti’s set. This helps rather than hinders director Laurent Pelly’s clear-eyed production that reaches into the very heart of the opera and leaves Strauss’ gorgeous music – as so passionately played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Robin Ticciati – to tell its own story.
Ariadne auf Naxos runs at Glyndebourne Festival until 29th August. For more information, including other productions in the season, and for tickets, please visit www.glyndebourne.com.
Photos by Tristram Kenton © Glyndebourne Productions Ltd.
