Organization

Alexey Vereshchagin

Singer

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The majordomo

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A music teacher

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The composer

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The prima donna

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The tenor

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The dance master

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The wigmaker

A lackey

Zerbinetta

Harlequin

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Scaramuccio

Truffaldin

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Brighella

Bacchus

Naiad

Dryad

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Echo

Ariadne

The officer

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Libretto

Stage director

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Conductor

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Lighting designer

Costume designer

Set designer

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Oligarch

Oligarch's Wife

Hans-Joachim Frey

Russian

German

Ariadne auf Naxos -  (Ariadne on Naxos)

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Ariadne auf Naxos Strauss,R

Public

Ariadne on Naxos

Approved

"Ariadne auf Naxos" is probably the most non-standard opera of the outstanding tandem - composer Richard Strauss and poet Hugo von Hoffmannsthal. And not only because of the unusual history of creation. It combined the seemingly incompatible: a crude comedy and high tragedy, Viennese stiffness and mischief - with the masks of the Italian commedia dell'arte.

The story of the work began in 1911, when Richard Strauss and his permanent co-author Hugo von Hoffmannsthal decided to thank director Max Reinhardt for his invaluable help in preparing the world premiere of the opera Der Rosenkavalier. Hoffmannsthal wrote to his father: "Together we want to compose a very small opera only for the chamber ensemble, which will be played by Reinhardt as an insert into the play." At that time, Hoffmannsthal was working on a reworking of Moliere's play "The Bourgeois in the Nobility", and he planned to use "Ariadne auf Naxos" as the finale of his "rewritten" play: “This is one of the most personal and dearest works for me; conceived as a whole, consisting of parts, it can exist, can arise only where a high theatrical genius is able to shape the parts into a whole ... "

Initially, it was planned to play the premiere in a drama theater - the German Theater in Berlin, which was then directed by Reinhardt. However, the demanding composer rightly expressed doubts whether the orchestra of the drama theater would be able to cope with his score, and therefore offered to play the premiere in Dresden. But the stage of the Saxon Opera was too big for such a "graceful thing". Reluctantly, Hoffmannsthal agreed to postpone the premiere to the small stage of the Stuttgart Opera, whose management promised to fulfill all the wishes of the authors. And there were a lot of them, including the condition that Reinhardt must act as a director and several actors and actresses of his theater were invited, as well as opera stars of the first magnitude - Maria Eritsa and Margarita Zims.

The world premiere took place in Stuttgart in 1912 and was not very successful, not least because of the length of the performance. Taking into account the technical overlays, the play by Moliere / Hoffmannsthal lasted more than three hours before the start of the opera itself, and the duration of "Ariadne auf Naxos" itself was almost an hour and a half. Thus, the action lasted for about five hours!

The idea of ​​combining a full-fledged dramatic and a full-fledged musical performance turned out to be nothing more than a utopia. A few years later, Strauss and Hoffmannsthal returned to reworking the opera in order to create a work without reference to Moliere's plot. The premiere took place on 4 October 1916 at the Vienna State Opera. It is in this version that "Ariadne auf Naxos" is played to this day in the largest theaters in the world. And the title role entered the repertoire of such outstanding singers as Maria Reining, Leonie Rizanek, Gundula Janowitz, Anna Tomova-Sintova, Jesse Norman, Deborah Voight.

The tradition of performing the opera "Ariadne auf Naxos" has not developed in Russia. After all, the Russian premiere of this work took place only in 2004 at the Mariinsky Theater. In 2016, the premiere took place in Moscow on the stage of the I. Boris Pokrovsky, which a year later became the Bolshoi Chamber Stage.

English

Ariadne on Naxos by Richard Strauss, From (2020/2022), Directed by Hans-Joachim Frey,, Conductor Alexey Vereshchagin

Credits (Cast & Crew)

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Program, About & Synopsis

Photos

Further reading

Performance Dates & Venues