Austria Richard Strauss, Ariadne auf Naxos: Soloists, Orchestra of Vienna State Opera / Cornelius Meister (conductor). Broadcast live (directed by Jasmina Eleta) from the Vienna State Opera, 28.1.2025. (JPr)

In 1978, Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos was the first opera I ever saw at Covent Garden, with Alberto Remedios as a wonderful Bacchus and Thomas Allen as Harlequin. Almost forty years later in 2017 I saw Allen once again in the opera this time giving a typically nuanced and superbly enunciated performance as the Music Master when Lise Davidsen sang her first performances of Ariadne on stage. With even more years passing it is now 2025 and Davidsen is winding down her career because she is pregnant with twins and has replaced the previously announced Anna Netrebko as Ariadne in Vienna. Singing Leonore in Fidelio at the Met in March will be her last performances until – if all goes as well as she hopes – 2026.
What Ariadne auf Naxos is about is something I have struggled with for over 57 years now; though both Glyndebourne’s 2017 revival of Katharina Thoma’s production and now Vienna’s revival of Sven-Eric Bechtolf’s 2012 Ariadne were as satisfying as most I have seen in the intervening years. Nevertheless, there are still at least a couple of longueurs when I wish Strauss would get on with it and even director Bechtolf appears to agree with me. So, while Sara Blanch’s Zerbinetta is hitting some stratospheric high notes and revealing supple coloratura in her Act II ‘Grossmächtige Prinzessin’ (about the joys of being fickle in love); Davidsen’s Ariadne prowls the stage complaining to the Composer, Music Master and even conductor Cornelius Meister, amongst others, that Zerbinetta should hurry up.
It is always worth a reminder about the opera’s plot which involves Vienna’s richest man giving a party with his guests being treated to a new opera, Ariadne auf Naxos. Set on a desert island, the jilted princess Ariadne, a personification of faithfulness and constancy, is pining for her lover, Theseus, and wants to die. When the god Bacchus turns up, she initially believes he is the messenger of death. He is instantly infatuated with Ariadne and although she falls into his arms, she never really seems to have figured out who he actually is. As comic relief, the rich patron has hired a commedia dell’arte troupe to perform the farce The Faithless Zerbinetta and Her Four Lovers. More importantly, at the end of the entertainment there are to be fireworks beginning at 9pm precisely. As everything begins to run late, the patron demands that both entertainments must be staged simultaneously and how the startled performers do that is up to them. A musical class war – and much mayhem – follows in a mashup of highbrow opera and lowbrow comedy as opera seria collides with opera buffa.
It is clear to me that Strauss and his librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, want us to consider what choices we would make concerning art, love, and fidelity. (As I have written before and certainly put in my notes whilst watching it again.) Ariadne ends with an homage to the love duets by Wagner for Siegfried and Brünnhilde and Tristan and Isolde. Wagnerian themes abound – too many to really detail here – about mothers dying in childbirth, a magic potion, breath, divine yearning, pain, and oblivion. In the end Zerbinetta sticks to her own, oft-repeated, philosophy that when a woman is in love, her heart belongs completely to her man – until the next love comes along: ‘When the new god approaches, we yield to him in silence!’
The Prologue opens in Rolf Glittenberg’s large, elegant and uncluttered room in the villa of the richest man in Vienna, with a large chandelier overhead and a huge picture window at the back looking out onto a garden. Bernhard Schir’s droll Major-domo dispenses caviar into a silver bowl and opens a bottle of bubbly. The Composer is in a tweed suit and becomes increasingly exasperated at having to first put his opera on together, and eventually, at the same time as a commedia dell’arte troupe’s burlesque. Also, he must cut it down because otherwise it will be too long. The costumes by Marianne Glittenberg are of a time somewhat later than the decade the opera was composed (1910s). For the second half of the Prologue and all its comings and goings we are in the dressing room of the villa’s private theatre with an array of makeup tables with their vanity mirrors surrounded by bulbs.
For the Opera itself we are inside that theatre and at the front of the stage there are three disassembled grand pianos as if they have washed up on Ariadne’s desert island. Ariadne sleeps by one of them and the ethereal Nymphs and kaleidoscopic commedia troupe will cavort under, over and around them with the Composer accompanying Zerbinetta’s ‘Grossmächtige Prinzessin’ playing one of them. Occasionally Zerbinetta – looking Emily in Paris chic in black and with a red bubble skirt – slides down its displaced lid. The Composer will also conspire with her to extend the aria beyond its natural length (Bechtolf being ironic again?).
Banked up behind in plush seats are some of the patron’s guests watching on, as the Dancing Master, Music Master and Composer try and keep the performance going smoothly. Since Bechtolf is clearly aware that Strauss has been rather overindulgent in this act he keeps everyone moving where possible; especially disguising the troupe of players hanging around too much by having them rushing about on scooters or twirling umbrellas. The final scene is lit by additional chandeliers and candles throughout the ‘audience’ through which Bacchus enters – in a shiny leopard print suit! – down some centre stairs and up which he will later walk out with Ariadne leaving Zerbinetta and the Composer in a passionate embrace. The Composer has discovered the true nature of love through his composition.
While I have always understood Strauss employs a much-reduced string section in this opera the pit at Vienna State Opera looked well-populated. This probably explains why this Ariadne from Cornelius Meister (who conducted at Glyndebourne in 2017) and the members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra revealed all Strauss’s musical contrasts, authentic swelling passion, rich orchestral textures and colours you would expect from his Viennese backstage comedy.

Overall, it was a fine ensemble performance with Kate Lindsay as the hyperactive, very driven Composer and probably the best in the role I have ever heard. Lindsay’s compelling high mezzo-soprano almost seemed capable of singing Ariadne. I have seen and heard more engaging burlesque quartets, though Jusung Gabriel Park stood out as Harlequin. There were strong vignettes from Thomas Ebenstein (Dancing Master) and Adrian Eröd (Music Master) whilst the voices of the trio of Nymphs (Strauss’s Rhinemaidens?) – with Ileana Tonca impressing as Echo – blended beautifully.
Baritenor Michael Spyres sang Bacchus and in that strange suit did not really look like the ‘beautiful god of peace’ Ariadne suggests he is. Spyres sings the fearsome role – which has defeated many other heroic tenors over the years – with little strain, his familiar darkish tone and ardent sound, as well as strong top notes.
This leaves us with Lise Davidsen’s elegant, imperious Ariadne; her technique and diction are impeccable, and she shapes Strauss’s longlines with a rare discernment. However, while Davidsen sang everything so well she rarely drew me into what she was singing about and ‘Es gibt ein Reich’ didn’t have the impact, for me, it should, though you could not fail to be impressed by her incredible vocal range. Obviously, her final duet with Spyres was as resplendent as you would want it to be from both of them.
To be honest, Davidsen isn’t ever going to be one of opera’s best actors, nevertheless her diva-ish looking down her nose at the behaviour of Zerbinetta and her fellow comedians, her disdain when offered their handkerchiefs and her petulance about their long-winded performance was undoubtedly very funny.
Jim Pritchard
Featured Image: Final scene of Sven-Eric Bechtolf’s Ariadne auf Naxos © Wiener Staatsoper
Creatives:
Production – Sven-Eric Bechtolf
Sets – Rolf Glittenberg
Costumes – Marianne Glittenberg
Lighting – Jürgen Hoffmann
Cast:
Major-Domo – Bernhard Schir
Music Master – Adrian Eröd
Composer – Kate Lindsey
Tenor (Bacchus) – Michael Spyres
Dancing Master – Thomas Ebenstein
Lackey – Marcus Pelz
Zerbinetta – Sara Blanch
Prima donna (Ariadne) – Lise Davidsen
Harlequin – Jusung Gabriel Park
Scaramuccio – Andrea Giovannini
Truffaldino – Simonas Strazdas
Brighella – Daniel Jenz
Naiad – Florina Ilie
Dryad – Daria Sushkova
Echo – Ileana Tonca