ARIADNE AUF NAXOS

Description

With stage direction by Katie Mitchel, an opera as impertinent as it is irresistible
The foundations of the repertoire rest on intense collaborations between librettist and composer. This is the case of the Mozart - Da Ponte, Verdi - Boito or Strauss - von Hofmannsthal binomial. Precisely Ariadne auf Naxos is, after Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier , the third title - out of six - as a result of this joint effort.

In 1911, the day after Der Rosenkavalier was created , Strauss and his poet-librettist wish to renew this creative partnership and hatch an adaptation of Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme . After its revision, the definitive version was released in 1916 with immediate success. In Mozartian colors, it integrates and combines neoclassicism and popular Italian mask dances, the most inflamed Wagnerian moments with a lullaby more typical of Schubert, and a language without complexes, flexible and expressive at the service of theatricality.

La Ariadne auf Naxos by Katie Mitchell, the renowned theater director, tells the story of the richest man in Vienna, who has commissioned a serious opera from a young composer, as well as inviting a group of actors from the commedia dell'arte . As she asks everyone to act at once, the frivolous Zerbinetta tries to convince the tragic Ariadne that men are all the same and even interchangeable. This debate between fidelity versus metamorphosis, in addition to being a tribute to Molière and Mozart, is an opera as impertinent as it is irresistible. Life imposes oblivion and transformation.

Ariadne integrates this Pirandellian image of the "theater within the theater" and, under a layer of apparent humor, hides the dislikes of love and life. Multiplicity of feelings in action and a clash of worlds that finally coexist in the resignation of an unattainable paradise.

PARADISE: love
Ariadne auf Naxos
OPERA IN A FOREWORD AND AN ACT
Booklet by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
World premiere: 10/25/1912 at the Kleines Haus des Hoftheater in Stuttgart (first version).
10/04/1916 at the Wiener Hofoper (final version).
Premiere in Barcelona: 01/14/1943, at the Gran Teatre del Liceu.
Last performance at the Liceu: 11/12/2002.
Total representations at the Liceu: 24.

Approximate total duration2h 40m

Artistic file
Stage direction - Katie mitchell
Dramaturgy - Martin Crimp
Scenography - Chloe lamford
Choreography - Joseph W. Alford
Locker room - Sarah Blenkinsop
illumination - James farncombe
Production - Gran Teatre del Liceu, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Finnish National Opera and Ballet and Royal Danish Oper
Symphony Orchestra of the Gran Teatre del Liceu
Director - Josep Pons