Opera

Ariadne auf Naxos

Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Keith Bruce, five stars

HAVING been a year ahead of the Debussy centenary with last year’s David McVicar production of Pelleas et Melisande, Scottish Opera now anticipates the 70th anniversary of the death of Richard Strauss in 2019 with Antony McDonald’s very stylish staging of the strange beast that is Ariadne auf Naxos.

The winnebagos are parked on the lawn, linked by duckboards, backstage at a country house summer opera. The musicians collect their parts from the temperamental composer (Julia Sporsen), the protégé of the Professor (Sir Thomas Allen). As the producer (Jamie MacDougall) tries to maintain the peace, the Party Planner (a wonderfully Morningside-accented Eleanor Bron) introduces other elements into the evening’s programme – a burlesque turn and pyrotechnics – that sit uneasily with the pretensions of the opera premiere. While this is all delivered in a mix of recitative and spoken dialogue, the composer’s aria hymning the power of music before the interval prepares the way for the very different, Wagnerian world of Ariadne itself that will follow.

Being a McDonald staging it all looks gorgeous of course, and packed with witty detail in the costuming. The frocks of the Rhinemaiden-like Nymphs that wait on Ariadne (American soprano Mardi Byers in her Scottish Opera debut) are those of the most stylish bridesmaids. Jennifer France, recently the Controller in Jonathan Dove’s Flight, is stunning as a Dita von Teese Zerbinetta, and Alex Otterburn (Greek) her Harlequin in a company that is a masterclass in perfect casting.

With Byers, France and Kor-Jan Dusseljee as Bacchus vying for the vocal honours, conductor Brad Cohen (another company debut) draws superb playing from the small orchestra in the pit on a score that requires vast range of expression and many virtuosic solo turns.

Another ten brass and string players are deployed in the foyer for the pre-performance premiere of Samuel Bordoli and Bernard MacLaverty’s Grace Notes, which is built on another superb vocal performance by Catherine Backhouse, as MacLaverty’s composer heroine Catherine Anne McKenna. It may have been cleverly conceived as a companion piece to the Strauss and to celebrate the architecture of the theatre’s new front-of-house, but it richly deserves a further independent life.