Ariane is a late opera (1906) by Jules Massenet. Now largely forgotten it has recently been recorded by the Palazzetto Bru Zane in their admirably produced series of French rarities. Unfortunately, unlike some of their other rediscoveries I wasn’t much taken with it.
The plot is an odd take on the Theseus and Ariadne story. Ariadne helps Theseus defeat the Minotaur then sails away with him to Naxos taking her sister Phaedra with them. Phaedra and Theseus fall in love and Ariadne is devastated. When Phaedra learns what effect she has had she curses Aphrodite and attacks a statue of Adonis with a rock. Aphrodite causes the statue to fall on and kill her. This is rather more revenge than Ariadne wants so she goes down to the Underworld and trades a bunch of roses to Persephone for Phaedra. On returning to the light Phaedra vows to give up Theseus but it doesn’t stick and she and Theseus set off for Athens. Ariadne drowns herself. Continue reading
Viktor Ullmann’s “one act play” Der Kaiser von Atlantis gets talked about a fair bit but fairly rarely performed. Operabase lists only three productions worldwide in the last five years. It was written in Theresienstadt to a libretto by Peter Kien and nether composer nor librettist survived the war. It’s quite short; well under an hour, and is usually seen as a parody of Hitler and the National Socialists. I think it’s quite a gentle parody though, especially given when and where it was written.
Not too many CDs of new opera recordings, at least of mainstream repertoire, come my way these days. Studio recordings have become rare and the usual medium is a video recording, itself a spin off from a live broadcast; TV, cinema or web, of a live performance. This makes sense to me. Just listening to an opera has always seemed a second best. Anyway, that’s all by way of saying that I was a bit surprised to find myself listening to a CD edition of a live recording of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut from the 2016 Salzburg Festival. How did this recording happen you ask? The answer is on the box, where Anna Netrebko in the title role, gets top billing, even over the composer.
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