“Ariadne auf Naxos” Balances Tragedy and Comedy

Steven Winn praises the Merola Opera Program's new production of Richard Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos" in San Francisco Classical Voice. Merola is San Francisco Opera's training program for young singers, and the show opened July 30 at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, with Ann-Katrin Stöcker conducting and Omer Ben Seadia directing. The opera was first produced in 1912 and remade in 1916 with the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Its structure moves between seriousness and comedy from the start. A moneyed patron has commissioned two short pieces, then decides the serious opera and the comic troupe must perform simultaneously so there will be time for fireworks afterward. The composer of "Ariadne," sung by Theo Claveles, rages against this degradation of high art, but money talks. The backstage mayhem peaks when the commedia players climb atop a wall, tearing pages out of the "Ariadne" score and flinging them into the air. In the main act, Ariadne has been abandoned by Theseus and wants to die. Adia Evans, doubling as the Prima Donna and Ariadne, sings her sprawled on a rock under a red tablecloth laid over her like a shroud. Opposite her, Emilie Kealani's Zerbinetta, a woman who knows about being dropped and bouncing back, delivers one of opera's most treacherous coloratura passages atop a spinning rock. Bacchus, sung by Matthew Sink, gradually draws Ariadne back toward life. The patron's fireworks did go off in the end, Winn writes, not in the sky but in this marriage of tragedy and comedy.