Review | Ariadne auf Naxos: Hong Kong Arts Festival opener is an opera within an opera that treats the ears better than the eyes
- Ariadne auf Naxos pits highbrow opera against lowbrow comedy, and the commedia dell’arte wins hands down with vocal pyrotechnics
- In the opera section, the cast and scenery are all in black, but the powerful singing and impressive playing from the orchestra make this a winner
Ariadne auf Naxos is a bold choice to open this year’s Hong Kong Arts Festival.
An opera that can be a challenge for audiences more used to Verdi or Puccini, it’s a tricky work – top-notch performances and a lot of imagination in terms of direction and design are needed to pull it off.
This production by Bayerische Staatsoper was more a feast for the ears than for the eyes – it scored strongly on musical excellence, but the 2008 staging by Robert Carsen looked dated.
The opera was conceived by Richard Strauss and his librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, in 1912 as a musical divertissement to accompany the latter’s adaptation of Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
This unwieldy format was not a success, and in 1916 a revised version was created that proved more popular and was the one shown here.
