Bruno Ravella has become director of choice for Strauss at Garsington Opera, it would seem, where his new staging of Ariadne auf Naxos follows his benchmark Intermezzo of 2015 and his elegant Rosenkavalier two years ago. All three have revealed a fine understanding of the complexities of Strauss’s music and dramaturgy. His Ariadne, however, is more radical than its predecessors, a considered, if at times drastic rethink of an ambivalent even problematic work.
Ravella strips the opera of its familiar associations with the baroque, either in the original 18th-century setting or the ornate profusion that most directors bring to it. In their place is something altogether more stark and austere. Designer Giles Cadle’s simple set of staircases and platforms initially frame the backstage doors and rooms for the Prologue, but are later transformed by Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting into a disquieting, Escher-type labyrinth – Naxos as an island of the mind where Natalya Romaniw’s Ariadne is effectively imprisoned by her own loneliness. Costumes, meanwhile, suggest the 1950s, with Romaniw in a plain pink dress and her attendants in green, while Polly Leech’s Composer and Young Woo Kim’s Bacchus both wear suits.
The absence of fussiness allows Ravella to dispense with various directorial tropes that have crept in over the years. Not having the stage awash with extras in the Prologue leaves us free to concentrate on narrative, psychology and the all important interplay of ideas. There’s no attempt in the second half to suggest any sort of development of the relationship between Leech and Jennifer France’s Zerbinetta, which is left unresolved, as it should be, by the time we reach the interval. And the final apotheosis, achieved by the sparsest of means, is breathtaking.
There are flaws, though. The harlequinade is po-faced and unfunny. And I’m not convinced that Zerbinetta’s Grossmächtige Prinzessin is really about the levels of vulnerability and anger that Ravella has France bring to it here. But it’s a fascinating piece of theatre, and the best of it is beautiful indeed.
The theatrical sparseness also means that music and emotion really hit home. Romaniw is an outstanding Ariadne, singing with great depth of feeling and an extraordinary richness of tone over the role’s wide range, her low notes as sumptuous as her upper register is thrilling. France, in her second UK Zerbinetta this year, is also excellent, her coloratura wonderfully accurate and gleaming. Kim sang handsomely with a telling, subtle use of dynamics. Leech’s Composer is bright-voiced, passionate and superbly acted. In the pit, the Philharmonia play quite wonderfully for Mark Wigglesworth, whose conducting is remarkable in its finesse, intensity and emotional depth.
• Ariadne auf Naxos is at Garsington Opera until 21 July.
• This article was amended on 20 June 2023. An earlier version suggested Young Woo Kim “ducked one tricky high note” in the performance; however, Garsington informed us after publication that the conductor had requested the singer omit the top B flat traditionally interpolated in the final duet and sing the lower note that appears in the published score.
