Booking Confirmation by email
Ticket pick-up at the evening box office
Run time: 2hrs 00min, no intermission
Sung in GERMAN
Subtitles in English, German, Italian, French, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Chinese
Camilla Nylund stars as Ariadne, the mythological heroine abandoned by her lover on the island of Naxos. In Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s charming opera-within-an-opera, she is joined by Erin Morley as Zerbinetta, the leader of a commedia dell’arte troupe that finds itself stranded on Ariadne’s island. Stephen Gould sings Bacchus, the young god who eventually wins Ariadne, Jennifer Holloway is the Composer of the fictional opera, and Boaz Daniel sings the Music Master. Christian Thielemann conducts.
Creators
Born in Munich into a family of musicians, Richard Strauss (1864–1949) began his musical studies at the age of four, began composition studies aged 11 and in 1883 became a protégé of the conductor Hans von Bülow, who encouraged him to study the music of Wagner. Strauss’s early masterpieces include several orchestral tone poems and many songs. Around the end of the 19th century, Strauss turned his attention to opera.
The libretto for Ariadne auf Naxos is by Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929), with whom Strauss collaborated over the course of 20 years in one of the most remarkable partnerships in the history of opera. Hofmannsthal emerged as a poet and a sophisticated dramatist within the fervent intellectual atmosphere of Vienna at the turn of the last century.