Admin

Organization

Singer

Baritone

Thomas Allen

A music teacher

Soprano

Soile Isokoski

Ariadne

Kate Lindsey

The composer

Laura Claycomb

Zerbinetta

Uliana Alexyuk

Dmitri Vargin

Harlequin

Tenor

James Kryshak

Scaramuccio

Bass

Torben Jürgens

Truffaldin

Andrew Stenson

Brighella

Sergei Skorokhodov

Bacchus

Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke

The dance master

Guy de Mey

Ana Maria Labin

Naiad

Mezzo-soprano

Elodie Méchain

Dryad

Gabriela Istoc

Echo

Spoken

William Relton

The majordomo

Conductor

Vladimir Jurowski

Stage director

Katharina Thoma

Costume designer

Irina Bartels

Set designer

Julia Müer

Pianist

Gary Matthewman

The prima donna

Stuart Jackson

The officer

The tenor

Michael Wallace

The wigmaker

Frederick Long

A lackey

Orchestra

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Glyndebourne

German

Ariadne auf Naxos -  (Ariadne on Naxos)

United Kingdom

Opera House

Ebert Room

Lewes

Ariadne auf Naxos Glyndebourne 2013 Isokoski Lindsey Claycomb Skorokhodov

Strauss’s madcap Ariadne auf Naxos, in which lowbrow comedy dukes it out with highbrow pathos, gets a hilarious and heartbreaking update in this production from the 2013 Glyndebourne Festival. Katharina Thoma directs a powerhouse cast, including Soile Isokoski as Ariadne, Kate Lindsey as the Composer, Laura Claycomb as the scene-stealing Zerbinetta, and Sergey Skorokhodov as Bacchus, backed by the world-class London Philharmonic Orchestra under maestro Vladimir Jurowski.

Ariadne auf Naxos, premiered in its most widely performed second incarnation in 1916, is not your typical opera. Its first act, a prologue, sets the scene at the home of a wealthy Viennese man who has hired two musical troupes to perform: a deadly serious opera seria company and a slapstick commedia dell’arte group. Due to last-minute time constraints, the two ensembles are forced to perform their acts simultaneously—and predictably, the addition of a comedy act into the story of the spurned Ariadne, waiting to die alone on the isle of Naxos, leads to a truly singular second act, a canny melding of genres that plays on the audience’s conflicting expectations.

Katharina Thoma’s staging transposes the myth into a more modern setting: an English manor during World War II, far from Ancient Greece. Flames and rubble evoke the carefully reconstructed wartime scene, while the eminently talented cast brings astonishing vocal precision to this complex work. Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra are, as ever, second to none, bringing out every nuance and highlight in the score.

Glyndebourne’s wartime history as a home for evacuee children is the ingenious context for a new production of this unclassifiable entertainment in which low comedy and high tragedy compete for our attention, "borne aloft by Strauss’s divine music and Hofmannsthal’s visionary poetry". At the centre of this production from Katharina Thoma is the noble, tragic figure of the abandoned Ariadne herself, in a haunting performance from Soile Isokoski, "with brilliant support from the pit" (The Independent).

In the end everything turns out happily, but before that things are going well: Laura Claycomb as Zerbinetta and her entourage amusingly stir up not only the music establishment; their top tones are crystal clear. Even the smallest roles are well cast in this production, so that even nurse gossip becomes an entertaining musical number.

Photos