Ariadne's Naxos Transformed

Andreas Homoki stages a lively, intelligent account of Strauss's metatheatrical masterwork

Preparations for Ariadne: the Zurich cast in rehearsal clothes awaits their costumes Picture © Monika Rittershaus

Richard Strauss’s genial masterpiece Ariadne auf Naxos has a long tradition in Zurich. It was first performed there in December 1912, six weeks after the Stuttgart premiere, in a version rarely performed today - as a 90-minute operatic ‘divertissement’ tacked onto the end of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's lengthy adaptation of Molière's play Le bourgeois gentilhomme. Strauss and Hofmannsthal subsequently adapted it into a more practical version, first performed in Vienna in 1916: this begins with a Prologue showing backstage preparations for a performance of Ariadne and ends with the opera itself. The Vienna version is the one favoured by most opera houses today — including the Zurich Opernhaus, which has just unveiled a new production directed by its soon-to-depart Intendant, Andreas Homoki.

Homoki grasps the challenges of the Prologue with bare hands: the curtain rises on Michael Levine’s empty stage in which all the principals mill around in modern everyday clothes waiting for the behind-the-scenes hurly-burly to begin. A rack of Hannah Clark’s early 20th century costumes descends from the flies to be donned by their characters. Ariadne’s opera-within-an-opera format lends itself to this kind of tabula rasa approach. To Homoki’s credit he creates a sense of a bustling back stage milieu with hardly anything on stage - a few free-standing flats seen from behind (ie not in the audience’s view) and a stage crew to support Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s onstage characters.