Tragedy and Comedy collide when two sets of performers – an opera company and a troupe of comic actors – are compelled to perform together. Stunning melodies and relentless energy characterize this brilliant jewel from Richard Strauss.

In this opera-within-an-opera, the lead role is an unnamed prima donna whom we meet backstage (in the Prologue) at the private theater of the wealthiest man in Vienna, who is giving a party. His guests will be entertained with the premiere of a tragic opera, in German, Ariadne auf Naxos, written by a young, idealistic composer. (This is the premiere of his magnum opus which celebrates the purity of erotic and existential longing.) But at the very last moment, he is told by the host’s cruelly indifferent Major Domo that the rich patron of the spectacle has decreed, that in order to save time for the evening’s fireworks display, Ariadne auf Naxos will be presented concurrently with an improvised farce by Zerbinetta and her comic acting troupe who have also been invited to provide entertainment.

High Art and Escapism must coexist. The composer is crushed, but he isn’t immune to the charms of the irrepressibly sexy Zerbinetta. And thus begins a philosophical, musical and theatrical combination of diametrically opposing ideas: Pure love and fleeting desire, grand art and entertainment, music and narrative.

Strauss weaves all of this together with some of the most achingly beautiful music ever composed, and one of the most spectacularly athletic coloratura arias in all of opera. Ariadne auf Naxos offers something for everyone, slapstick comedy as well as serious mythological themes. In the end, the colliding worlds of tragedians and comedians, for all their differences, end up in mutual admiration.

Renay Conlin