At 7 p.m., at Teatro La Fenice:

ARIADNE AUF NAXOS, by R. Strauss

Orchestra and chorus of Teatro La Fenice

Markus Stenz: Conductor

Paul Curran: Director

Sara Jakubiak: Primadonna / Ariane

John Matthew Myers: The Tenor / Bacchus

Olga Pudova: Zerbinetta

Markus Werba: A Master of Music

Paolo Antognetti:  Officer

Anna Lucia Richter: The Composer

Sometimes, two geniuses have to put their work back on the drawing board… After the triumphs of Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier, Richard Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal imagined a small opera based on Molière’s The Bourgeois Gentleman. Their attempt to blend theatre and song met with mixed success, but this was without counting a second attempt in 1912 to create a great work that would blend new and old, sacred and profane, myth and reality with a virtuosity hitherto unknown.

Ariadne auf Naxos is indeed one of the most original operas in the repertoire. The prologue, whose subject matter has lost none of its relevance, imagines a wealthy Viennese patron who decides to have a comedy and a tragedy performed at his home on the occasion of a gala. Thus, as time is running out, the serious drama (a rereading of Ariadne abandoned by Theseus on Naxos) and the farce drawn from the commedia dell’arte will be brought together during the same evening, in a fascinating mise en abyme of theatre within the theatre. Perhaps never has Strauss reached such musical heights as in this Ariadne of astonishing beauty.

British director Paul Curran directs this mischievous masterpiece, accompanied by a troupe of experienced singers (including John Matthew Myers and Sara Jakubiak in the demanding roles of Bacchus and Ariadne). In the pit, the German Markus Stenz is a renowned interpreter of the music of Richard Strauss.