SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Strauss, Ariadne auf Naxos: Seattle Opera Young Artists Program, soloists, members of the Auburn Symphony, cond. Brian Garman, dir. Peter Kazaras; Meydenbauer Center, Bellevue, WA, 1.4.2010 (BJ)

Even when shorn of the Molière play that prefaced its original version, Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos is a spectacularly original and frankly experimental work. The notion of interleaving a story of high tragic tone with another set in the vein of low comedy was utterly fresh. Good comedy, I’ve long believed, is harder to write than good tragedy. Surely to combine the two is hardest of all, but librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s dramaturgic skill and Strauss’ compositional genius saw them triumphantly through.

Enter Peter Kazaras. The artistic director of the Seattle Opera’s Young Artists Program has a gift for glossing seemingly conventional operas with directorial devices that seem idiosyncratic but end by providing brilliant illumination. What, I wondered, could he possibly do to transform an opera that is already unconventional and idiosyncratic? Not surprisingly, the answer turned out to be a great deal.

Admittedly, the most obvious innovation was dictated by the physical characteristics of the small Theatre at Meydenbauer Center. Even with the smallish instrumentation Strauss used for this score, the orchestra wouldn’t quite fit in the pit. So Kazaras put the players on the stage, and designer Donald Eastman came up with a minimalist but perfectly adequate set disposed around them. Just a case of turning a circumstantial problem into an artistic stimulus, for the action played out in the most natural way on the two levels and connecting staircase of the set. Another neat solution, given that the Bacchus in this production is shorter than the Ariadne, was to have her stand on a lower step for their final embrace. (But I did think one nymph’s propensity to shake with delight every few minutes was one bit of stage-business too many.)

Melanie Taylor Burgess’ costumes were resolutely non-period, Zerbinetta and her four commedia dell’ arte-derived sidekicks sporting a garish array of what I can only call gear in as many colors as you can imagine. For me and the other old fogeys in the audience, this was initially a bit shocking, but it too turned out to be illuminating, because to the sizeable contingent of youngsters in the house it must have made those characters just five other people like themselves.

Like the double plot, the score of Ariadne abounds with evidence of its creators’ determination of prick the bubble of romanticism whenever it threatens to grow too dominant. The romance and the emerging neo-classicism of Strauss’ writing were both beautifully realized under Brian Garman’s practiced baton.

For old-fashioned opera-lovers, however, it was perhaps the singing that made the biggest impact. Not all of it was perfect–you shouldn’t expect that from a Young Artists Program–but most of it was wonderfully seductive. All the smaller roles were well taken, with Alex Mansoori, Michael Krzankowski, Bray Wilkins, and Erik Anstine combining clean vocalism with a strong sense of fun in the commedia dell’arte knockabout, and Stephanos Tsirakoglou convincingly distraught as the Music Teacher.

Strauss loved to write for the soprano voice, and its three main exponents were all superb. Vira Slywotzky was a suitably musicianly and intensely sympathetic Composer, and Megan Hart coped womanfully with Zerbinetta’s near-impossible stratospherics. With the tenor voice, on the other hand, Strauss had a more adversarial relationship, but Gregory Carroll sang Bacchus with no trace of the strangulated quality that has afflicted many famous artists’ attempts at the role.

For the Ariadne of Marcy Stonikas, only superlatives will do. The warmth and flexibility of her voice enveloped us all with its loveliness, and she easily rode even the larger orchestral climaxes–there were some crescendos of apparently inexhaustible power on sustained notes. Most definitely, this is a singer with a big future.

Bernard Jacobson