4.04.2003
Patrick J. Smith reviews the Met’s Ariadne auf Naxos:
[Posted 1:32 PM by James Panero]
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.