Artists
Mark Wigglesworth – conductor
Bruno Ravella – director
Giles Cadle – designer
Malcolm Rippeth – lighting designer
Natalya Romaniw – Ariadne
Young Woo Kim – Bacchus
Jennifer France – Zerbinetta
Polly Leech – The Composer
William Dazeley – His music master
John Graham-Hall – The dancing master
Innocent Masuku – Brighella
Ossian Huskinson – Truffaldino
Richard Pinkstone – Scaramuccio
Claire Lees – Naiad
Siân Griffiths – Dryad
Harriet Eyley – Echo
Graham Clark – The Major-Domo
Programme
Strauss Ariadne auf Naxos
Garsington Opera and the Philharmonia present Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos.
An opera of two halves? A comedy of two halves? Or both at once. That’s what is proposed by ‘the richest man in Vienna’, who has commissioned two entertainments, one from a serious opera composer and one from a troupe of comedians. When he discovers that sitting through both separately would delay the firework display he has planned, he gives orders for the two shows to be performed simultaneously on the same stage. The earnest young Composer is horrified while the pragmatic Zerbinetta is happy to give it a go.
As a result, the story of Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos and despairing of her lost love, is interrupted repeatedly by the comedians, keen to help and to advise her that the best way to cure a broken heart is to find another lover.
The dream team of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal came up with this eccentric idea after quite a few rewrites. The combination strikes at the heart of what music and drama mean with a lightness of touch and lustrously sumptuous music.
Natalya Romaniw sings the title role, with Bruno Ravella directing and Mark Wigglesworth conducting.
Sung in German with English supertitles
Need to know
Prices & Discounts
£165 – £260
All prices include a suggested, but non-obligatory, donation of £70.
Running time
3 hrs 50 mins, including an interval
Box office
01494 376037
Email: boxoffice@garsingtonopera.org
