Paris.(In Reviews: from around the world: International - Ariadne auf Naxos)(Opera Review)

It was good to see Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos promoted to the Palais Garnier from the Opera Comique, where the Paris premiere of the work took place in 1943, with Roger Desormiere conducting Germaine Lubin as Ariadne and Janine Micheau as Zerbinetta. This new production for the Opera National (seen November 25), by Laurent Pelly, benefited from a fine cast under experienced conductor Pinchas Steinberg.

Pelly is a talented producer, famous for his witty La Belle Helene at the Chatelet and The Seven Deadly Sins for the Opera National. His productions tend to have a bright-edged, contemporary seaside feel, and Ariadne was no exception. The main conceits of his approach were to reject Hofmannsthal's opera-within-an-opera plan, and to transform the commedia dell'arte troupe into Italian street performers. By seeing the opera as complementary to the prologue rather than as its natural continuation, Pelly ran the risk of undermining the already awkward structure of the work, but the happy band of contemporary Italian players was delightful, particularly on Naxos, where their sun, sea and Samos style of tourism captured perfectly the lighthearted commentary of the characters.

The house of the richest man in Vienna was shown in Chantal Thomas's designs as a rather soulless mansion, with few exterior signs of comfort, a minimalist Bauhaus country house into which the baffled artists both classical and popular were deposited, arriving in a splendid limousine through driving snow. Into this frosty, heartless atmosphere, emphasized by the glacial Viennese orders of veteran tenor Waldemar Kmentt's Majordomo, Sophie Koch's Composer brought glowing warmth. Vocally her performance has gained in subtlety since she sang the role a couple of seasons ago at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, while losing none of the boyish, youthful impetuosity that should make her an equally outstanding Octavian. Her dialogue with Natalie Dessay's Zerbinetta--the latter vividly outfitted with bright-red tights and wig--was unusually telling, helped by David Wilson-Johnson's warm, sympathetic Music Master and Graham Clark's outstandingly projected Dancing Master.

The opera proper found the mansion of the prologue reduced to a concrete carcass on Naxos, in which a sad Ariadne lived out her broken dreams, in a half-completed villa, tended by Najade, Dryade and Echo, here portrayed as good-hearted local Greek ladies who brought food to this eccentric, ...