Ariadne auf Naxos by Strauss, do. 28 feb 2019, Van (2019/2019), Geregisseerd door Dominique Horwitz,, Dirigent Enrico Calesso, Mainfranken Theater, Würzburg, Duitsland

Ariadne auf Naxos brings the tense relationship between comic and serious opera to the stage; a conflict that bundles central debates in the history of opera like in a burning mirror. A rich gentleman is planning the performance of a comedy and a serious opera, and the evening is supposed to end with fireworks. The hostile mood between the dedicated comedians on the one hand and the opera singers on the other is fueled further when the same gentleman out of the blue orders the simultaneous performance of both works - a shock, not only for the desperate composer! But what appeared to be incompatible and catastrophic in the "Prelude" - the combination of opera buffa and opera seria - turns out to be a coup in the "Opera". The miracle of the theater seems perfect... As early as mid-1911, immediately after completing work on Rosenkavalier, Strauss and Hofmannsthal drafted the scenario for their third opera together. The seemingly “thin dramatic skeleton” (Strauss) was a special challenge for Hofmannsthal from the start: “We always want to do something very good, even if it’s just an interim work, we owe it to ourselves.” The first version was the opera Ariadne auf Naxos Molière's play The bourgeois as a nobleman. The basic situation of the game within a game developed here was retained even after the adaptation to the "Opera in one act with a prelude". In this version, the work secured a permanent place in the repertoire from the start and can now be heard in Würzburg for the first time since the 1989/90 season. The plot touches the foundations of the theater and the theater business and is therefore a tailor-made challenge for an artistic crosser like Dominique Horwitz, who was won over to direct the new Würzburg production. Horwitz – born in Paris and known to a large audience for more than four decades after theater stints in Tübingen, Hamburg and Munich, also through television and cinema – as an actor, singer and author always seeks the tension between different genres and varieties of theatre.