from the Amazon.com Web page of the DVD version of the YouTube video being discussed
Because I seem to spend so much of my time making my own choices of YouTube videos that I wish to view, I rarely pay attention to attempts to woo me with recommendations. However, when I was able to find a video of Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella, I happened to notice a recommendation for Richard Strauss’ opera Ariadne aux Naxos. I made it a point to add this item to my “sooner or later” list; and “later” finally took place this afternoon. The title of the YouTube file itself was sufficient to attract my attention: “Ariadne auf Naxos Böhm Janowitz.” “Böhm,” of course, was Karl Böhm; and some readers may recall from my account of the Deutsche Grammophon retrospective box set Karl Böhm: The Operas that the collection included three recordings of Ariadne auf Naxos made in 1944, 1954, and 1969, respectively. “Janowitz” was Gundula Janowitz singing the title role.
The video was made from a film, which was not based on any of those three recordings. Rather, it was made by John Vernon and is currently available from Amazon.com as a DVD. Sadly, neither the YouTube video nor the packaging of the DVD provided much information about the production. The only production-related credit goes to the staging of the opera by Filippo Sanjust. Fortunately, there is an opera discography Web site that dates the “capture” of the performance as having taken place in October and November of 1977 and May and June of 1978, possibly in conjunction with performances by the Vienna State Opera.
[added 10/31, 5:35 p.m.: Note that the YouTube file for this particular performance does not include subtitles, but subtitles are available on the DVD version.]
For those unfamiliar with Ariadne, it is basically an opera about opera. (It is far from the first in that genre. Even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart took a crack at that narrative genre.) The opera that it is about (so to speak) is a single-act creation; and, in the libretto, it is preceded by a Prologue. The context for the Prologue, in turn, is based on Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (loosely translated as “the middle-class aristocrat”), by Molière. The title character of this play is planning to host a major social event; and, he is assisted by two of his “hired help,” a music master (baritone Walter Berry) and a dancing master (tenor Heinz Zednik). The music master has, as his protégée, a young composer (soprano Trudeliese Schmidt in a “trouser” role), who has written an opera about Ariadne abandoned by Theseus on the isle of Naxos. The dancing master, on the other hand, is promoting a commedia dell'arte troupe led by the seductive Zerbinetta (coloratura soprano Edita Gruberova). After heated arguments over which of these offerings will be shown to the guests, the host, in all of his bourgeois wisdom, commands that the two offerings be performed simultaneously!
The result is that the “opera” portion of the score is a bit like a pendulum swinging between the ridiculous and the sublime. However, if we go by the way in which Strauss developed his score, it is pretty clear that the opera concludes in sublime territory with Ariadne rescued from Naxos by the god Bacchus (tenor René Kollo). Nevertheless, Zerbinetta manages to get in a penultimate word reflecting the ribald behavior that is as rich as the astronomically high notes that Strauss composed for her part.
I have had a generous amount of exposure to this opera in both full-length performances and excerpts presented at “scenes” recitals at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. As a result, I have been exposed to a wide variety of different approaches to this confrontation between the ridiculous and the sublime. My preference remains a Paris Opera production I saw in the Eighties in which the setting for the opera portion includes all of those guests that had been invited for the evening as audience. As the opera progresses, particularly after the arrival of Bacchus, the guests gradually nod off and then leave their seats, meaning that, by the final measures, Ariadne and Bacchus are singing to an empty house!
Sanjust’s staging, on the other hand, took a more straightforward approach to the narrative. In so doing he tended to blunt the edges of both the ridiculous and the sublime. As expected, Böhm gave a first-rate account of the music (all the more impressive since he was in his mid-80s at the time). However, staging details tended to undermine his efforts to keep things going at a crisp pace. Fortunately, all the vocalists were in first-rate conditions, all singing as if they really enjoyed performing this music. (A full account of the cast can be found on the opera discography Web site and on the image of the back cover of the DVD on the Amazon.com Web page.)
No comments:
Post a Comment