Ariadne auf Naxos

[Sean]

I bought the Masur recording of this key sixth Strauss opera, after Rosenkavalier and preceding Die Frau ohne Schatten, and charting his loss of finish and symmetry in construction of melodic line, and in response his increasing wholeheartedness and disregard for such emerging limitations.

The soprano part already has a dreamy magic inviting a wider-scaled, less moment-to-moment critical listener response, and the langorous orchestration sounds like it doesn't really mean it in the usual German sense. The audience is sympathetically brought in as in Wagner, but very differently...

I'm presently listening to the 2001 Sinopoli recording, which lacks a little of Masur-Norman's bite but is effective enough to wallow in- the main thing.

[Sean]

Now listening to one of the (18th c) coloratura sections where the notes are really getting the better of Strauss, his fun with the music per se overriding all structural concerns- the attention shifts from making sense of the music architecturaly to making sense of it just as bliss and smirk.

[knight66]

I assume you mean the 12 minutes or so of Zerbinetta'a aria. It is a pastiche, a homage, fun for sure, but no smirk and very well structured in the way that a Baroque aria was written and then decorated. The flights of fancy fit the words....but then, I recall, you and I have walked this path before.

Mike

[Sean]

The attention moves inwards though (and towards his suprastructures), and that's why I like it!!- the formal concerns are smiled at, the comical side of Ariadne's situation indulged in, almost as though he's moving off the continent for a while over to foggy England here...

[zamyrabyrd]

Here's a delightful little Zerbinetta danicng around the stage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuWgdUIlh0w&mode=related&search=

[knight66]

Yes, excellent. I hardly know her work, a nice find.

Mike

[Sean]

Here's a delightful little Zerbinetta danicng around the stage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuWgdUIlh0w&mode=related&search=

Isn't she fantastic, phrasing, intelligence and obviously knows the convoluted music and the whole role inside out- I just interrupted my CD here of the opera and can't turn her off: fine Strauss singing, real bath-house indulgence; Grove cites her refinement of phrase beyond the usual coloratura singer, yes indeed, including some absolute perfection in the present example, totally cool and assured. Slight shame about the idiot audience applauding just before the end, but looks like she even knew this was coming.

[val]

My favorite version is the one conducted (very, very well) by Karl Böhm.
Della Casa is a deeply touching Ariana, Seefried a delicious "Composer" and Güden one of the best Zerbineta I heard. Rudolf Schock is an acceptable Bacchus (he was already Bacchus in Karajan's famous version), but my preferred tenor in this role is Rene Kollo in Solti's version.

[Sean]

Thanks for that val, I haven't heard the classic Kara nor Solti yet.

[mjwal]

I'm not usually a great adherent of Karl Böhm, but in this case I agree about the virtues of that 1954 live recording. There is an even earlier performance conducted by him in wartime Vienna & saved for posterity, in which Seefried is even more superb, Max Lorenz is the most heldentenorial Bacchus ever and the Naiad, Dryad & Echo really trill! Maria Reining ain't half bad either, a really tragic protagonist. - The discussion about structure seems a little beside the point to me, since Strauss/Hofmannsthal here create a new structure, very modernistically disjunctive, the updated commedia dell'arte being crosscut with the transfiguration of death by love - or vice versa? In any case that OTT quality is of the essence in this work.
Of course the sound quality disbars this from being the standard recommendation.