SummerFest 2014 program

The Story and Settings The Prologue In the home of the wealthiest man in Vienna, feverish preparations are underway for the presentation of a new opera, Ariadne auf Naxos. In the midst of the confusion, the composer's music teacher learns that a comic ballet entitled Zerbinetta and Her Lovers is also on the bill that evening. To confound matters even more, the major-domo stuns the entire ensemble by announcing that the master of the house—to allow for a fireworks display at nine on the dot—has ordered that the ballet and the opera be combined and performed simultaneously on the same stage. As Zerbinetta is adept at improvisation, she should have no difficulty in managing such an arrangement. The reluctant composer accedes to the proposal, convinced that his music will win the day, captivated more by Zerbinetta's flirtatious ways than by common sense.

Intermission The Opera The curtain rises to reveal Ariadne marooned on the island of Naxos, abandoned by her lover Theseus, whose life she has saved and with whom she has fled after his escape from the Minotaur in the labyrinth on the island of Crete. Nature itself, in the form of three nymphs, shows sympathy for her predicament, but they do not console her. Ariadne yearns only for death as she waits for Hermes, messenger of death, who will lead her to the underworld.

As Ariadne wallows in despair, Zerbinetta bursts onto the scene and sneaks in an aria (considered by many as the most difficult aria in the soprano repertory) to calm Ariadne’s laments and to persuade her to look instead for another lover—all to no avail, despite the fact that Zerbinetta and her dance partners illustrate as best they can the pleasures of romantic pursuit.

Suddenly the nymphs herald the approach of the god Bacchus who has just escaped from the embraces of the sorceress Circe. Ariadne believes Bacchus to be Death coming to claim her. She approaches him with timidity, but the sight of him awakens her to new life through the miracle of love. She agrees to accompany him to Olympus, rather than to death as she had at first imagined, where she will later be transformed—as enthusiasts of astronomy know—into the constellation Corona Borealis. As they embrace, Zerbinetta saunters across the stage commenting on the fickleness of women while Bacchus and Ariadne, oblivious to everything else, sing of love as the greatest glory of life.