RICHARD Strauss's opera Ariadne Auf Naxos is a curious animal with a circuitous history. First staged in Stuttgart in 1912, with a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, it was created to be performed after Hofmannsthal's adaptation of Moliere's play The Bourgeois Gentleman.
In 1916 Strauss created a second version, in which the Moliere was jettisoned, to be replaced by a prologue that explained to the audience how the composer came to create an opera in which a Greek classical tale became entwined with a commedia dell'arte troupe.
The premiere of this witty, new co-production between Scottish Opera and the Holland Park opera company was put back by two days due to the Sauchiehall Street fire of March 22. Relocated to modern-day Glasgow, with a new, English-language version of the prologue by Helen Cooper, it shifts Strauss's juxtaposition of high art and low comedy into the 21st century.
Gone are the Renaissance Italian players, replaced by a cabaret troupe who specialise in knife throwing and risque burlesque. The unseen "richest man in Glasgow" has paid top dollar to assemble at his mansion, unbeknown to the artists themselves, both the cabaret performers and an opera company. Then, at the last moment, he decides he wants them to play, not consecutively, but together.
Ironically, the "lowbrow" artistes' insistence that their routines will liven up the boring opera about Ariadne's abandonment on the island of Naxos is borne out by the decidedly dry, somewhat static treatment afforded the classical story. The cabaret artists' Village People-style appearance (with characters including a Weimar music hall hostess and a Greek guard) is given depth by a neat, Sapphic sub-plot.
Soprano Jennifer France excels as burlesque performer Zerbinetta, while Mardi Byers (Ariadne) and Kor-Jan Dusseljee (Dionysus) sing the closing scene with a power that elevates the ancient narrative.
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