I saw Ariadne auf Naxos again on Wednesday at Holland Park; a very different kettle of fish to Longborough. This time the players were allocated caravans to change in, not dissimilar to the ones given to Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren when they were making Arabesque in Wales.
The story is set in the grounds of a rich Glaswegian and the accents in the rather long-winded recitative reflect this. After the interval Strauss’s sublime music takes over. Comparisons are often drawn between Richard Strauss and Wagner. The similarity I notice is that they both leave the really good stuff until the end, by which time I’m sometimes having forty winks.
The most interesting opera this season at Holland Park was Isabeau by Pietro Mascagni. PM knocked out fifteen operas of which the only one regularly performed today is Cavalleria Rusticana. Holland Park revive the unknowns – they put on Iris a few years ago.
If Isabeau was a masterpiece it would be performed more often, actually it had never been performed in Britain until this production. There is something exciting about seeing a new opera. Hamlet last year at Glyndebourne exceeded all my expectations. I enjoyed Isabeau rather more than some purse-mouthed critics. It is a medieval tale of a king who rejects his daughter’s love and makes her ride naked through the town – King Lear meets Lady Godiva sums up the plot. There is one problem with the opera: there aren’t enough good arias. Holland Park favourite director, Martin Lloyd-Evans, gets round this successfully. The orchestra and chorus are given plenty to do, Mascagni knows how to work them, and there is a set that is constantly changing shape. As a veteran visitor to Holland Park I marvel that there are sets at all – there never used to be thirty years ago.
Richard Bratby in The Spectator calls it “pure Monty Python and the Holy Grail … dressing-up box medievalism … crude toytown sets”. I enjoyed the medieval madness and a chorus that looked like a Brueghel picture that had come alive. I don’t think I went to sleep.