Music Master Nicholas Folwell Majordomo Donald Sinden Composer Susan Parry Tenor/Bacchus Jon Fredric West Zerbinetta Erie Mills Prima Donna/Ariadne Christine Brewer Dancing Master Anthony Mee Harlequin Peter Snipp Scaramuccio Richard Roberts Truffaldino Mark Richardson Brighella Richard Coxon Naiad Gail Pearson Dryad Catherine Savory Echo Mary Plazas Conductor Richard Hickox Revival director Lynn Binstock Sign interpreter Wendy Ebsworth This production has been around since 1983, and consists of a period prologue and a somewhat minimalist opera with a lot of watery blue. The commedia del arte performers are also rather washed out looking. I've vaguely wanted to see Ariadne for thirty years. I heard it on the radio in the mid-1960s while off school with tonsilitis, and always wondered how the music fitted in with the baroque contortions of the poem by Catullus from which it derives. I was encouraged to see this production by the superb Rosenkavalier directed by Jonathan Miller that I saw at the ENO earlier this year. What I saw was an object lesson in how much difference a director can make. Donald Sinden went through the motions as the Majordomo as though he were doing Sheridan, and most of the singers didn't show much trace of direction except for standing and moving in the right places. The presence of Susan Parry, a touchingly bewildered Octavian, as the Composer highlighted the lack of emotional direction in this production -- she seemed confused at times, but mainly apathetic. Only Erie Mills as Zerbinetta seemed, plausibly enough, to be trying to run the show, but she got little response from the others. I was never sure whether Ariadne and Bacchus were sending themselves up or not. On the other hand, the singing was terrific. Mills was particularly delightful, the other comedians were splendid and Brewer and West are big league voices. Mary Plazas was also impressive as Echo. But without a production to bring out some of the literary and emotional force of the work, this was just luscious music beautifully sung. I'm pretty sure there is more to this than as a vehicle for Strauss's music. It was originally conceived as an interlude in a production of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, then given its own prologue set in the Vienna of Maria Therese, the same context as Rosenkavalier. Catullus' Ariadne appears on a tapestry that covers the wedding bed of Peleus and Thetis, a mortal married to a god. So it's tempting to think that Strauss' (or the Composer's) Ariadne is performed at a wedding feast paid for by the Buerger als Edelmann Herr von Farinal. A final word on the sign interpreter, Wendy Ebsworth. Unfortunately, I couldn't see her this time, but I heard other people saying that she was giving a far more passionate performance than the singers. She's a real star.