Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos will be the only Metropolitan Opera production to be filmed for television this season, and in the event (I heard it March 31) the choice was a wise one. The cast, with one partial exception, was a very strong one, and the unobtrusive but efficient stage direction propelled the story of simultaneous comedy and drama, sauced by Strauss’s music, effortlessly to its rapt close. James Levine’s handling of the small orchestra revelled in color and delicacy and at all points supported the singing.
The singing in fact was first-rate for this quintessential "singing" opera, led by Natalie Dessay’s extraordinary Zerbinetta. She is a major operatic artist, affecting in her acting, accurate and always imaginative in her vocalism, with a diamond-hard soprano that can seemingly take on anything. Her traversal of the notorious coloratura scena Grossmaechtigen Princessin approached the definitive. Like many Zerbinettas I have heard, she suggested in its latter portions an underlying pathos of irredemable loss that suddenly made this supposedly flighty Commedia dell’arte party girl a human being of touching vulnerability. The Met stage will have few better performances this season.
The role of Ariadne well fits Deborah Voight’s voice and temperament -- she can stand and deliver acres of gorgeous sound without flagging. The rather passive sensuousness of Strauss’s writing for soprano is completely in tune with Voight’s personality, and her lack of dynamic acting is no detriment. Similarly, Richard Margison as the rescuer-lover Bacchus has only to sing to be effective, and he almost managed to control the fearsome role rather than let it control him (as with most tenors in this example of Strauss’s Tenor Revenge).
Nathan Gunnmade was a dynamic, well-sung Harlekin, and Wolfgang Brendel a smooth Music-Master, while the ageless tenor Waldemar Kmentt gave a lesson in diction and deportment as the supercilious Major-Domo. The only drawback to the evening lay in the Composer of Susanne Mentzer -- well enough acted but pushed of voice, as if she was trying to fill every corner of the large house. The voice curdled, and what should have been the impetuosity of the young Mozart became petulence. Nonetheless, the whole made a superior evening of opera and it is well worth its continued existence on film.
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