R Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos  | Brilliant Classics - Opera Collection 9084

R Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos

Label: Brilliant Classics - Opera Collection

Cat No: 9084

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 2

Genre: Opera

Release Date: 23rd March 2009

Contents

Artists

Deborah Voigt
Natalie Dessay
Anne Sofie von Otter
Ben Heppner
Staatskapelle Dresden

Conductor

Giuseppe Sinopoli

Works

Strauss, Richard

Ariadne auf Naxos, op.60

Artists

Deborah Voigt
Natalie Dessay
Anne Sofie von Otter
Ben Heppner
Staatskapelle Dresden

Conductor

Giuseppe Sinopoli

About

Libretto downloadable from www.brilliantoperacollection.com

One of a series called the 'Opera Collection' – an extensive new collection of operas, ranging from baroque to the twentieth century, many of which are award winners.

Initially designed to be a play with music, it quickly became apparent to Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal that what was intended as an after-dinner entertainment would require an opera company to perform it. So, in 1916, a 30-minute ‘divertissement’ became a 90-minute opera, with a newly composed prologue. Set in the house of ‘the richest man in Vienna’, it concerns the struggles of a young composer to arrange a performance of his new opera for the guests his master has invited to the house.

His opera is about Ariadne on the island of Naxos, and all the backstage chaos and bitching and scratching among performers and the domestic staff is wonderfully portrayed by Strauss. The mutual hostility between the Major-Domo and the composer is exquisite. The prologue is followed by the opera proper, and the marvel of the orchestration is especially notable – with just 36 players playing some of Strauss’s most sumptuous music.

Any opera house in the world would think themselves fortunate to assemble this cast … A landmark in the history of the gramophone … this really does triumph over them all.’ - Gramophone

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