'Ariadne' in Double Exposure
SIMON, JOHN
On Music ‘ARIADNE' IN DOUBLE EXPOSURE By John Simon ?n any short list of the greatest operas, room must be made for Ariadne auf Naxos, Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's supreme...
...In Ariadne II, this grows into an impassioned aria for the Composer...
...Such hybrids do not work...
...As Zerbinetta, Sumi Jo is magnificent, singing the high tessitura of her great aria with its F sharps in ledger as easily as if it were "Frère Jacques...
...But the 1954 recording, although carefully engineered, inevitably falls short of current standards and has lost something in the CD transfer...
...To begin with, all the artists on, under and behind the scene would have to be in top form...
...Interestingly, her earlier great coloratura aria, Grossmächtige Prinzessin, is pitched a tone higher...
...Now we have the first recording of the original Ariadne auf Naxos (Virgin Classics 45111), conducted by Kent Nagano...
...An orchestral introduction for Bacchus that I rather enjoy was cut too...
...It features the eventually cut passage of what Kennedy calls "witty byplay with the conductor [that] satirizes operatic conventions...
...As Richard T. Fairman put it in Gramophone, there are "passages when the intonation is touch-and-go," and "nervousness at facing Ariadne's noble high ? flats...
...Even more anticlimactically, we are treated to some more Molière...
...Forthwith, Jourdain rhapsodizes on the anticipated dinner...
...As the third, Echo, Cangemi is replaced by Virginie Pochon for reasons that remain a mystery...
...Lamprecht and Fournier later appear as Dryad and Naiad, two of the three nymphs attending Ariadne...
...with the original Ariadne he fills in an even larger lacuna...
...The commedia troupe decides to improvise an amorous pursuit by four clowns of the charming, promiscuous Zerbinetta...
...Thus Hofmannsthal explores his frequent theme of fidelity versus transformation...
...Fickle, he tires of her and abandons her on the desert isle of Naxos...
...Even more than their most popular work, Der Rosenkavalier, it is a compelling blend of the serious and the comic, the fondly backward-harking and audaciously innovative, with both variety and concision firmly on its side...
...Though well sung by Doris Lamprecht and Brigitte Fournier, it seems expendable to me as well...
...The offstage orchestra's simulated tuning up leads into the Introduction to Act Two...
...Finally, the Lyons Opera Orchestra performs elegantly under its regular conductor, the AmericanKentNagano...
...Jean-Jacques Velly has called Ariadne II "a moment of grace and perfection in which nostalgia and modernism achieve a happy fusion...
...But the first musical number is an ostentatious trumpet flourish, Jourdain's musical thumbnail character sketch...
...The dinner climaxes in an omelette surprise: a kitchen boy issuing from the giant egg dish...
...Second, even the parts preserved by the definitive version underwent changes, mostly cuts, so that Act Two of Ariadne I is in effect an expanded version of Ariadne IPs second act...
...This terrific Swedish tenor has evolved from a delicate Mozartian into a robust, flexible heldentenor...
...Different, though, is the conclusion...
...Nagano has already done yeoman's service to Strauss by recording the original French version of Salome...
...A third reason is the exceptional quality of the vocal, orchestral and engineering performances...
...Molière's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme was reduced to two acts, with its philistine hero, M. Jourdain, offering his dinner guests a newly commissioned opera seria followed by a merry commedia dell'arte...
...unfortunately, it is also longer than needed to make clear that we are dealing with a baroque numbers opera as opposed to the prevalent post-Wagnerian through-composed ones...
...The tailors subsequently exhibit their fancy wares to a wonderfully showy and fussy gavotte and polonaise...
...Only some of Jourdain's monologues are retained, delightfully delivered by Emst Theo Richter, who also sings Jourdain's silly ditty amusingly...
...From this point on we hear in the main what all music lovers know from Ariadne II...
...For the Rhine salmon, we get a bit of Wagner's Rheingold...
...Hofmannsthal saw him performing a fiercely sexy dance, but Strauss provided a rambunctious Viennese waltz, illustrating the occasional disagreements between composer and librettist...
...The heartbroken girl hopes for a speedy death and mistakes the young god Bacchus for its messenger, Hermes...
...In the next musical number, the Dancing Master tries to teach Jourdain the minuet, and in the one following the Fencing Master offers a lesson...
...The first song, a preview of things to come, is an arietta, "Thou Son of Venus,' delivered by a hired singer (Veronica Cangemi) to a sicilienne already heard in the Overture...
...On the runners-up, conducted by Kurt Masur (with a too-mature sounding Ariadne from Jessye Norman, and a somewhat bland Bacchus from Paul Frey) and by Rudolf Kempe (where the golden-throated Gundula Janowitz lacks drama, James King is stiff, and Silvia Geszty is an earthbound Zerbineria), the sound is fine...
...And the biggest bonus is the Bacchus of Gösta Winbergh...
...Nevertheless, it is extremely instructive to compare a delectable first version with a magisterial second...
...Soon, however, the orchestral forces of the postlude increased to between 35 and 37, and its length grew...
...He is the only Bacchus on record who sounds both youthfully innocent and divinely empowered...
...This is not quite so true of Ariadne I. But an observation of Cecil Gray's may apply to both: "In Ariadne Mozart and Mascagni, Handel and Offenbach dance a minuet...
...The incidental music Strauss had composed for the Bourgeois gentilhomme scenes he turned into a highly popular, much-recorded suite...
...Such endearingly dirty dancing is not to be missed...
...Thereupon the elaborate menu is cheekily musicalized, as parodies and comic quotations ensue...
...Ariadne is also the rare case of an opera overhauled from a fine but flawed first version into an uncontested summit achievement...
...The opening section of the recording very sensibly omits most of the Molière text...
...The harlequinade is alike in both versions, and utterly delightful...
...After some discreet musical underpainting for Jourdain's final soliloquy, we reach the Overture of the opera within the opera...
...Ariadne is Margaret Price, a singer of opulent voice, refined German diction and great artistry, albeit a littlepastherprime...
...The 1912 Ariadne /, our concern here, is a relatively far cry from the 1916 revision, a repertory mainstay...
...The chorus—Dryad, Naiad, Echo—remains much the same, but Zerbinetta has a long aria extolling Bacchus to Ariadne that is musically expendable and dramatically jarring...
...Yet Price compares honorably with my favorite in the role, Lisa Della Casa...
...Perfection, a rara avis in any field, is just about impossible in an operatic recording...
...Strauss' fondness for this period was to be epitomized in his 1923 Dance Suite After Couperin...
...Lastly, a stage work, for optimum effect, has to be experienced live...
...Before that, the Overture, for strings and a sort of piano continuo, sets the tone for the piece: in Michael Kennedy's words, "the 17thcentury as seen through 20th-century eyes...
...What is the justification for bringing out on two CDs a superseded and almost never performed original version...
...On Music ‘ARIADNE' IN DOUBLE EXPOSURE By John Simon ?n any short list of the greatest operas, room must be made for Ariadne auf Naxos, Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's supreme masterpiece...
...Especially so when the three principals on the Virgin Classics set are as superb as they are...
...This can be effective on stage but adds nothing to a recording and, in any case, detracts from the aria's main purpose...
...The authors of Rosenkavalier owed him a favor for his uncredited directorial help on that opera...
...Without quite matching Karajan's passion, he offers clean and graceful accompaniment...
...Both the minuet and gavotte, incidentally, are recyclings from Strauss' unproduced ballet Kythere (l900...
...First, Strauss lovers have long been curious about it...
...In the Greek myth, Princess Ariadne helps Theseus kill the deadly Minotaur, then sails with him for Athens...
...Alas, in Ariadne I, the authors bring on the clown show for an unnecessary encore, a misstep worthy of M. Jourdain...
...Anyone interested in how these dissimilar geniuses collaborated must, of course, read the fascinating StraussHoffinannsthal letters, published in this country under the titled Working Friendship (Random House, 1961...
...Then, notto delay the fireworks scheduled for nine o'clock, the inane millionaire decrees that the two musical spectacles be performed concurrently...
...for the saddle of mutton, the sheep music from Strauss' own Don Quixote...
...Fresh from his unsatisfactory first sexual adventure with the enchantress Circe, Bacchus falls deeply in love with Ariadne and elevates her to the heavens as his consort...
...Still, there does exist on CD the nearperfect Ariadne II (EMI 69296), conducted by Herbert von Karajan with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Rita Streich, Irmgard Seefried, and Rudolf Schock in the principal roles, and such stars as Hermann Prey, Karl Dönch, and Hugues Cuenod in the supporting ones...
...The dish of larks and thrushes gets the songbird music from Rosenkavalier plus an allusion to "La donna è mobile," presumably because Mantua, the scene of Rigoletto, was said to include these creatures in its cuisine...
...These passages afford Strauss a fine range of expression from the gracile to tire coruscating...
...There are several CD recordings of this superb second version, all of them with points of genuine interest, but none of them perfect...
...Since Jourdain finds it gloomy, the Music Master provides a duet for a shepherd and shepherdess that Jourdain reprehends with "Why always only shepherds...
...In Ariadne II, the opera ends climactically with the apotheosis of Bacchus and Ariadne, interrupted only momentarily by a brief comment from Zerbinetta, showing that she has understood nothing of the great transformation she has witnessed...
...But the Stuttgart premiere of Ariadne I was a failure, notably because operagoers did not want to sit through a play, and playgoers resented a long musical appendage...
...In addition, the technicians would have to create flawless sound...
...Yet the differences, I think, are worth noting...
...This is interwoven with the tale of Ariadne, the one-man woman faithful unto death to her faithless lover...
...Initially, the operatic treatment of this story was to be intertwined with a cornmedia dell'arte and serve as a half-hour postlude to a Molière play mounted by Max Reinhardt...
...Though it doesn't have Rosenkavalier's undercurrent of personal loss, it has a major tenor role and reaches the sublime earlier and more often...
...This arguably hardest of all coloratura arias comprises 39 more bars in the middle, and 40 more at the end, as well as an extended coda...
...Realizing this, Strauss and Hofmannsthal created the magnificent Prologue, really a first act, a backstage comedy-drama in which those putting on a show for Vienna's richest man debate, fight, maneuver, or fall in love prior to the performance...
Vol. 80 • December 1997 • No. 18
