Ariadne auf Salzburg
Live webcast from Salzburg, right now: the 1912 Ariadne/Le bourgeois gentilhomme in a new adaptation by Sven-Eric Bechtolf and starring Jummy Jonas Kaufmann as Bacchus. La Casa della Cieca is open for your convenience. [Medici TV]
If this were Regie…Camille was loving it.
Thank you again for posting the notice, La Cieca. A very nice homage, in its way, to Hofmannsthal, and it moved me to hear him speak of his works and his then work-in-progress, Die Kaiserin.
Fwiw, Magee and Mosuc are in a 2006 Zurich DVD of the 1916 version, with Herr Pereira as the Haushofmeister, ha, ha, and Dohnányi conducting. Saccà, who takes over from JK this week, is the Bacchus.
Just watched parts of the Salzburg Ariadne. I don’t get it. WHY must these designers, directors and dramaturds make everything they do look so UGLY? The public in house is paying top dollar to be seen at the festival and they are forced to look at drek. Worst of all is that the Intendants and same designers are so proud of themselves for coming up with abortions of what should have been beautiful. Opera is not dying -- the people who make it are killing it, and nobody will care once it’s too late.
Really, QPF? I thought the Ariadne production/costumes were very attractive, interesting and fun. IMO, nothing approaching ugly about this one.
I do, however, think the Boheme production with Trebs was unnecessarily crappy.
“I do, however, think the Boheme production with Trebs was unnecessarily crappy.”
Was that production originally supposed to be shared with the Met and open the next season, does anyone know? I remember that a new Boheme with Netrebko was planned but pressure was put on Gelb not to replace the Zeffirelli production so opening night was changed to a new Elisir with Trebs instead (bad choice imo).
I thought that ELISIR was a replacement for a new ONEGIN?
Oh yes you are right I got a bit muddled:
“So the gossip La Cieca has been picking up is that at some point there were plans at the Met to open the 2012-13 season with Eugene Onegin featuring Mariusz Kwiecien, Anna Netrebko and Matthew Polenzani. The soprano and baritone were also booked to open the 2013-2014 season with new production of La bohème. Then various things happened and the new Puccini production was canceled in favor of the sacred/cash cow Zeffirelli version, and the Tchaikovsky opera moved back a year using the casting (Mariusz, Anna, etc.) of the scuttled Bohème.”
http://parterre.com/2010/12/25/you-the-gelb/
It was supposed to be season after next.
I agree about the Ariadne, Clita. (Except for Ariadne’s rather undistinguished gown -- also not quite sure about those hats on the three ladies, but they were undoubtedly entertaining.) The designs generally seemed very literate and sophisticated to me. Bacchus’ panther suit was especially fun, very right for the character as he was played, and I think very much in the spirit of art nouveau or the Secessionists -- you could almost imagine someone wearing it in a Klimt painting. I also liked the contrast between the more art nouveau treatment of the tragic characters and the cubist lines and color scheme of the commedianti.
Still need to see the Boheme, but the snips I’ve seen didn’t instantly put me off.
Batty, I don’t think there was much they could do with Magee. She is rather “stocky” and not the best actress. I was not crazy about her hairdo either--kinda frumpy. Rennaay also looked frumpy in the Baden-Baden Ariadne as well.
I know this is catty of me to say, but I kept wondering why Magee didn’t get her roots done. I thought the hair color was fine but if I were going onstage (especially something filmed in close-up) you can be sure I’d get my roots colored. /shallow
I did not catch what was their point in presenting the Diva in such plain form — how about more stylish clothing, a good wig? And all that hand movement and posturing during Zerbinetta’s endless aria — ooof! The thing that really chilled me, however, is the return of Zerb. at the end after Ariadne and Bac. had departed. God, I got sick of her and her endless voice on high notes. Thank god Strauss made a revised edition.
Magee is an attractive woman with lovely coloring. Of course there is something that they “could do with her” -- it’s called Good Design. I understand that her gown was supposed to mirror the black mourning dress worn by the Countess, but it was unflattering. That doesn’t mean that there was no way to make her look good. I agree that her hairdressing needed some inspiration as well, and I suppose it was her real hair rather than a wig, something you don’t see that often at such a prominent venue.
I guess the costume designer ran out of inspiration and the director & co. were to busy or distracted to push for a more attractive design…or… they liked it.
Blue, I can think of another possibility why one character’s design might stand out from the rest for wussiness – force majeure. A friend of mine designed a beautiful production all centered around a superb raven-haired prima donna. But the prima donna was changed late in the game (for reasons that were not her fault), and a certain strawberry-blonde administrator said, “wouldn’t it be nice if [character] were a strawberry blonde?” Over my designer friend’s screams, the new prima donna wound up as a strawberry blonde in frumpy pink while everybody else wore sleek, highly saturated colors.
I bet you know a lot more of the same kind of stories.
Hey, I loved those hats. They were charming. Headdresses, really.
I must confess I absolutely hated the Ariadne production, which I found static, pretentious and insufferably self-regarding. Everything looked tacky, “in the style of”, including the poor Monsieur Jourdan, who had none of the humor and charm of the original. Faux 18th century, faux art deco, faux interactions among characters. And Bechtolf’s contributions to the text and plot seemed entirely contrived and patched on.
…poor Monsieur Jourdain…
Yes, contrived -- that’s the word I was seeking.
Well, Ariadne is pretty contrived to start with (which is the whole point of the piece).
oedipe, I quite agree, half-way. I found the prolog insufferable, squirmed in my seat impatiently waiting for it to get on, and it did, on and on and on. However, I found the opera enchanting, with its lovely and quite different spin on the familiar music. (And I think gabriel bermudez is a hunk.) I loved Jonas, I LOVED Mosuc (she rocked!!), and on the whole got quite carried away with that end of things. Many years ago I saw a production of yet another earlier version (not quite this) directed by, if memory serves me, one of the Aldens, and it was also charming in its way and the music also deliciously different.
I too liked the singing very much. I tried to concentrate on it and forget about the lack of dynamism of the staging, which made me think of a static Holiday on Ice.
or the Liberace Disaster Show.
Regie directors like Konvitchny have been using and burning grand piano’s for decades -- it’s so old hat. Yes, Liberace Disaster Show! Bravo, bravo! httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO851xeYsl
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO851xeYsl
pretty impressive ticking the ivories with 400 carats of rocks on your fingers!
Lest we forget… extensive Liberace research has yielded the source for the feathers worn by Nayad, Dryad and Echo as so admired above.
Who knew that Ronny Dietrich had a Liberace fettish!
opps… sorry. At 1:49 we also see the source for the imortal Rosanne Rosannadana.
An extended excerpt from the finale of the Ariadne, including Jonas in the cat suit.
The freeze frame of Emily looks like Eleanor Steber is trying to channel her way back to this world for one last drink.
Thank you LaC! The good bits! And to make up for my catty remarks above, I like Ariadne’s gown. Sort of like the production too, especially the chandeliers. They are the stars mentioned in the libretto I think?
Think I’ll need to study this a bit more.
Following up on our Ariadne critique, judging from some applause photos from last night’s performance, Ms Magee has taken our advice and her hair is now a very striking red from root to tip. I wish I could carry off that color.