Ariadne auf Naxos
APLAY WITHIN A PLAY: we’ve all seen it. An inept rendition of Pyramus and Thisbe infiltrates a noble Athenian wedding, a Danish prince catches his father’s killer by staging the Murder of Gonzago. But an opera within an opera? Well, this certainly exists, too. It’s used to great effect in Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and to incredibly surreal effect in Nixon in China by John Adams.
But Richard Strauss’s 1912 opera, Ariadne auf Naxos, which will be simulcast live from the Metropolitan Opera and available for viewing in Taos on Saturday, March 12, takes all of this to a new level. The opera was born of a desire to write music to accompany a play by Molière as well as a desire to write an opera about an opera that gets gate-crashed by a troupe of traveling players. Along the way, some Greek myth worked its way into the scheme, and the result—well, it’s hard not to use the word madcap.
A Viennese gentleman has arranged for a night of music comprising an opera and a Burlesque show. No one can decide which should be performed first; eventually, due to time constraints, the wealthy gentleman decides that they should be performed simultaneously (much to the chagrin of the opera’s composer, who is torn between artistic integrity and monetary gain—a timeless conflict if ever there was one).
Thus, we are launched into a burlesque
within an opera within an opera, with Ariadne, daughter of the mythical King Minos of Crete, abandoned on the island of Naxos by her former lover, Theseus (he of the Minotaur fame). Ariadne longs for death, but instead gets a troupe of clowns, who try to cheer her up with song and dance, and Zerbinetta, who is having her own man—or, more accurately, men—problems. Then the god Bacchus arrives, and he and Ariadne fall in love, and the burlesque and the opera (and the opera within the opera) are over.
Is this a plot? Not really. Was this one of Strauss’s more successful operatic ventures out of the gate? Decidedly not. The version we see these days is the second that Strauss wrote, the first having been literally hissed off the stage in Munich in 1912. After cutting several hours (yes, hours!) of material (including the entire Molière play), the second version that Strauss produced was, thankfully, more easily enjoyed by audiences.
Indeed, it remains quite popular and relevant today despite (or perhaps because of) its incongruous storyline. After all, as an art form, opera embodies such contradictions. It requires one to suspend disbelief on a number of levels, from the implausible plots to the very fact that all the characters are singing in situations where normal people don’t sing. Yet, once we get beyond these improbabilities, opera has a unique way of inspiring pure emotion in us. We take the silly with the somber, and that is what opera—and Ariadne— is all about.
That, of course, and the music. Ariadne auf Naxos features some of the most nimble, atmospheric music that Strauss ever wrote. Known for employing orchestras of over 100 instruments in many of his operas, Strauss pared the pit down to just 37 players for this one, allowing the music to interact with the singers rather than steamrolling past them. And when we gather at the Taos Community Auditorium this Saturday for the live simulcast of Ariadne, there will be some magnificent singers on display.
Foremost among them is soprano Lise Davidsen, whose international career was launched by the role of Ariadne and whose rise in recent years has been little short of meteoric. We’ll also hear two singers with close ties to the Santa Fe Opera. Brenda Rae, whom we’ve seen in recent Santa Fe productions of Candide and Lucia di Lammermoor, will sing the stratospheric role of Zerbinetta, whose marathon 12-minute aria Großmaächtige Prinzessin is perhaps the most famous piece in Ariadne. And Santa Fe audiences will have the chance to see Isabel Leonard (Ariadne’s Conductor) this summer in the title role of Georges Bizet’s Carmen.
Rounding out the cast are the unfailingly entertaining Johannes Martin Kränzle as the Music Master and tenor Brandon Jovanovich as Bacchus. The production by Elijah Moshinsky, which the Met debuted in 1993, is rich with vibrant color, playful action, plenty of laughs, and the perfect juxtaposition of reality and fantasy to compliment the opera’s inherent contrasts.
Make sure to arrive at the theater early, at 10 a.m., for a pre-opera talk by Nancy Schultz, including more history and commentary on Ariadne auf Naxos. It will surely deepen your enjoyment and appreciation of this very unusual opera.