Zurich.(Ariane et Barbe-Bleue)(Opera Review)

Just a few weeks after its controversial premiere of Debussy's Pelleas, et Melisande, Zurich scheduled the first local production of Paul Dukas's Ariane at Barbe-Bleue, thus presenting two Maeterlinck-derived operas within the same season. It was a veritable coup of program-planning, as if to settle for good the often-made claim that Ariane is the weak sister of Melisande. Under the electrifying musical leadership of John Eliot Gardiner, Ariane et Barbe-Bleue (seen January 16) emerged as a solidly rooted specimen of French fin de siecle music-theater. Not only were the proverbial doors of Bluebeard's home opened in the course of the evening; the Zurich production has broken the seal of Ariane's reputation as an inferior by-product of French Impressionism.

Clarity, transparency, luminosity and fluidity were the key-words of Gardiner's interpretation. As he had already demonstrated with his Zurich Benvenuto Cellini, his early study with Boulanger in Paris and his five years of musical directorship of Opera de Lyon have imbued Gardiner with a genuine Frenchness that he communicates with a beguiling suavity. His reading laid bare Ariane's historical roots, from Charpentier, Rameau and Berlioz to Dukas's contemporary neighbors such as Strauss and Rimsky-Korsakov, and beyond them to the futurist inklings of Dukas's pupil Messiaen (who praised his teacher to the skies) and even to the Boulez of Eclat. Performances of such musical intricacy are rare today.

Compared to Maeterlinck's passive Melisande, Ariane (like her mythical predecessor) is a messenger of light and enlightenment, almost a female Prometheus--although Dukas has rejected any standing for her as the representative of female emancipation. Ariane clearly loves Barbe-Bleue, but on her own terms. Disobeying her husband's order not to open the forbidden door, Ariane liberates his former wives from their dungeon-like cells but then ...