The most recent Metropolitan Opera Live in HD production to show up on my local PBS channel was Richard Strauss’ Ariadne aux Naxos. This was the composer’s third partnership with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, following up on the successes of Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier. The result turned out to be “something completely different.”
From a musical point of view, Ariadne is distinguished by Strauss scaling down his instrumental resources to only 37 players. Hofmannsthal also departed from what audiences tended to expect. He had previously created a German adaptation of Molière’s play Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, and he had asked Strauss to provide incidental music for the stage. Since Strauss never liked to be the “second banana,” he suggested to Hofmannsthal the idea of an opera that would serve as a “sequel” to Molière. That sequel, in turn, grew into the idea of a one-act opera about Ariadne stranded by Theseus on Naxos, where she then encounters the god Bacchus. The transition from Molière’s play would then become a prologue to that opera, with Hofmannsthal providing a libretto about all the things that go wrong before the “opening night” of an operatic production.
Mind you, the agent responsible for all those things going wrong is never seen. He is Mr. Jourdain, the title character from Le Bourgeois gentilhomme; and he “speaks” to both the composer and the performers of the opera through his Major-Domo (which is a strictly speaking role). His only concern is that he and his guests will able to view a fireworks show at 9 p.m. Before that time, his Music Master had prepared a new opera composed by one of his pupils (about Ariadne), while his Dancing Master had made arrangements for a troupe of commedia dell’arte players, led by the highly seductive Zerbinetta. Since being on time for the fireworks was more important than anything else, Jourdain decided that these two productions be performed simultaneously.
The result is that Strauss composed music for everything that happens before Jourdain’s guests arrive to sit through a musical performance while waiting for the fireworks. The intermission is then followed by the results of the “compromise” solution that satisfies both the opera singers and the dell’arte troupe. That solution turns out to be a journey from tragedy (Ariadne alone) through farce (Zerbinetta and her players try to cheer up Ariadne) to the transcendence of Ariadne’s encounter with Bacchus (briefly interrupted with a punch line from Zerbinetta). What, on the surface, might seem like a roller-coaster emerged as an elegant transition through contrasts staged for the Metropolitan Opera by Elijah Moshinsky, working with a diversity of eye-popping sets and costumes designed by Michael Yeargan.
As might be guessed, much of this “mash-up” involves the interplay between Ariadne (soprano Lise Davidsen) and Zerbinetta (coloratura Brenda Rae):
Zerbinetta (Brenda Rae, right) tries to explain life and love to Ariadne (Lise Davidsen) (from the Web page for this production on The Metropolitan Opera Web site)
For the most part Zerbinetta dominates, primarily due to the many technical hoops through which she must leap to do justice to Strauss’ score. Given how many of those hoops involve physical comedy with the other dell’arte players, Rae emerged as the dominating star in this production. (Mind you, Zerbinetta was conceived to be a scene-stealer; but Rae summoned just the right dispositions to keep that role from being too long and/or too tiresome.) Davidsen’s vocal skills only rise to the top during her duo work with Bacchus (tenor Brandon Jovanovich).
The staging of the prologue that precedes the “mashed-up opera” was equally engaging. The role of the young composer was taken by mezzo Isabel Leonard; and the role of her teacher, Jourdain’s Music Master, was sung by baritone Johannes Martin Kränzle. It is worth noting that Zerbinetta is the one character whose role does not change during the transition from the prologue to the opera itself. Furthermore, her efforts to persuade the composer to alter the score to make room for her troupe serves as a preview for her attempts to engage Ariadne during the opera itself.
Nevertheless, the foundation that supports both the prologue and the opera itself is Strauss trying to be autobiographical. Indeed, over the course of his compositions, this is neither the first nor the last of his creations in which his own personality serves as a foundation. Anyone familiar with the semi-autobiographical novel Cheaper by the Dozen remembers the opening line: “Dad had enough gall to be divided into three parts.” That epithet suits Strauss just as well as it described Frank Bunker Gilbreth (the “Dad” of that sentence)!
(Fun fact: Gilbreth has the same birthday as Gustav Mahler but was eight years younger.)
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