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Opera orchestrates dance of oppositesBy Kenneth LaFave
Tragedy and comedy. Words and music. Money and art. Life and death. Are such pairs irreconcilable opposites? Or do they constitute different aspects of the same things? Such ponderings are the stuff of Ariadne auf Naxos, Richard Strauss' opera about opera, being staged this month in its Arizona premier. (The Arizona Opera production opened last week in Tucson and opens in Phoenix Thursday.) Ariadne concerns the staging of an opera, also titled Ariadne auf Naxos, in peculiar circumstances. The moneyed patron of the work has asked that a harlequinade entertainment - a buffo comedy - take place at the same time as the tragic story of Ariadne, the woman abandoned to sorrow and death on the Greek isle of Naxos. A Prologue finds the opera's Composer stricken with horror that his tragic masterpiece is being bowdlerized by a rich man's fancy, while the opera proper finds farce and melodrama strangely made one another. Along the way, an intricate dialectic finds opposites at odds and in cahoots. Ariadne, languishing for the Messenger of Death, Hermes, is discovered by Bacchus, god of debauch. The harlequinade troupe enlivens the woeful landscape of Naxos while encountering more serious concerns than it wagered. Is this just an intellectual exercise? No, says stage director Nando Schellen. Schellen, the Dutch-born, Indianapolis-based stage director who mounted Arizona Opera's first Salome last season, says the fundamental impulse behind Ariadne is ... entertainment. "This is an opera full of action, a lot of entertainment," Schellen says. "The opera's relative unpopularity here in America" - contrasted with its high profile in Europe's opera houses - "is unwarranted. This is not 'intellectual, this is you win a lover; you lose a lover." The key to the opera is the flighty character of Zerbinetta, Schellen says. Of course, she's a coloratura soprano. "All the feelings and discussions of love and death and tragedy and comedy are brought back to earth by Zerbinetta, whose attitude and approach to life is shown in the end to be right. Yes it's enormously dialectic, but the miracle is, it all fits together," Schellen says. Zerbinetta also gets to sing one of the most famous arias in the coloratura repertoire. Strauss wrote Ariadne during World War I with his most famous librettist, Hugo von Hoffsmanthal. The two had collaborated on the enormously successful Der Rosenkavalier in 1912, overcoming the inevitable struggle for supremacy between words and music. Their referee had been theatrical producer Max Reinhard, and Ariadne was intended as a tribute to Reinhard's ability to negotiate compromise. Theater is collaboration, Strauss and Hoffsmanthal learned from Reinhard. Ariadne provides a brilliant illustration of this, Schellen says, by achieving the seemingly impossible synthesis of tragic and comic: "At first, we are aghast at the suggestion of a man who has a lot of money and no taste that tragedy and comedy should exist together. And yet, the tasteless decision of this rich man turns out to be something beautiful." The beauty is conveyed primarily through the score, which Schellen finds even more intensely melodic than the more popular Rosenkavalier. Arizona Opera's Ariadne auf Naxos will feature the lead female roles of Ariadne and Zerbinetta double-cast: Carmella Jones and Caroline Whisnant will share the title part, with Blythe Walker and Susan Wallin doing honors as Zerbinetta. Arnold Rawls will sing Bacchus, and Janice Felty will perform in the trouser role of the Composer. Schellen himself will appear in the speaking role of the Major-Domo. John Webber will conduct members of the Phoenix symphony in the pit. For more information, contact Arizona Opera's "Virtual Opera House" at http://www.evermore.com/azo on the World Wide Web.
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Ariadne auf Naxos (Synopsis) |
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