The Holiest of Art: Colin Ure speaks with Director John Cox about Ariadne auf Naxos

Ariadne auf Naxos Director John Cox is one of the world’s most distinguished theater and opera directors. His career began at Glyndebourne in the late 1950s, and his long association with the company included his tenure as their director of productions, highlighted by a Richard Strauss series which included Capriccio, Intermezzo, Die Schweigsame Frau, Der Rosenkavalier and Arabella. During the 1980s and 1990s he was general administrator and artistic director of Scottish Opera, and a principal stage director for Royal Opera, Covent Garden. His many productions have taken him all over the world, including to Houston Grand Opera, where he has previously directed Der Rosenkavalier and Arabella. Ariadne auf Naxos was the first Strauss opera that Mr. Cox directed. Here he shares his thoughts on the opera, its characters, and the mercurial quality of this glorious work.

Colin Ure (C.U.): What is Ariadne auf Naxos about?

John Cox (J.C.): At the time Strauss began working with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, he became very interested in the subject of the theater. I have no way of knowing if this was a direct result of their collaboration, or whether it was something inherent in Strauss himself. Ariadne auf Naxos is about the world of theater, and the people who work in it, Strauss and Hofmannsthal presenting theater as both an entity and a metaphor. This subject fascinated Strauss, who explored this topic in his operas, Capriccio and Intermezzo and also indirectly in Der Rosenkavalier.

C.U.: Tell us about the opera’s evolution from its first version as one half of a double bill with Molière’s play, Le bourgeois gentilhomme, to the final version that we are performing as a stand-alone opera.

J.C.: I have directed both the original version consisting of the play followed by the opera, Ariadne, and the revised version, with the newly-created Vorspiel or Prologue, and then the opera. Both versions incorporate the art of theater and the elements of performance. In the original version they are part of the ongoing play, while in the revised version, they are incorporated in the Prologue, in a very concentrated way.

C.U.: The Composer is one of Strauss’s most fascinating creations. His role is fairly short and yet he dominates the entire opera. Why did Strauss write this male role for a woman?

J.C.: The character of the Composer in Molière’s original play was a prose role rather than a singing role, and although he was a very sympathetic character, Strauss and Hofmannsthal greatly enhanced his character for the Prologue. I think that once Strauss abandoned what I would call his “modernistic” style influenced by the music of Wagner, he quite consciously chose Mozart as his model. The presence in several of Mozart’s operas of these “trouser” roles, for example, Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro, and Sesto and Annio in La clemenza di Tito, became a fascinating preoccupation for him. I also think there was an interest in sexual ambiguity in Vienna at the beginning of the twentieth century, obviously influenced by Freudian analysis.

C.U.: The characters of the soprano and the tenor in the Prologue perform the roles of Ariadne and Bacchus. They are rather caricatured; do you feel that they develop depth when they assume their roles in the opera?

J.C.: They each play two different characters. In the Prologue you see a larger than life diva, and a caricatured, bone-headed tenor blessed with a great voice and hopefully a fabulous physique. In the opera they are transformed musically and dramaturgically into the desolate, heartbroken Ariadne who is longing for death, and the heroic young God, Bacchus, who saves her. It’s a deliberate oxymoron which Strauss and Hofmannsthal clearly enjoyed playing with enormously.

C.U.: In the Prologue, are Zerbinetta’s feelings for the character of the Composer sincere, or is she merely being manipulative?

J.C.: I think that Zerbinetta regards the Composer as a task she must accomplish successfully. After all, if he refuses to allow his opera and Zerbinetta’s burlesque to be performed simultaneously, the entire evening will be wrecked. Zerbinetta is an accomplished student of the human psyche and in order for her task to succeed, she engages in a multi-faceted technique of seduction. However — although she is a manipulator — she does uncover a sincere and genuine side of her personality, which she rarely has occasion to show.

C.U.: Although the worlds of Ariadne and Zerbinetta begin as polar opposites, in the end they find a touching mutual humanity that unites them. Does Zerbinetta understand Ariadne’s plight?

J.C.: Although Zerbinetta and Ariadne inhabit very different worlds, Zerbinetta nevertheless recognizes Ariadne’s plight, but has a different way of dealing with it. She appears as fickle and superficial for the purposes of her art, but although she is more concerned with comedy and a glamorous appearance, like any great comic performer she can plumb the emotional depths as well. However in order to maintain a balance in the opera between drama and comedy, Strauss and Hofmannsthal only allow her to show fleeting glimpses of the serious side of her personality.

C.U.: During the opera Ariadne and her plight are satirized by Zerbinetta and her companions. However for the opera to work we, the audience, must feel sympathy for the character of Ariadne. How do you achieve this?

J.C.: Strauss and Hofmannsthal create sympathy for Ariadne through her music and dramaturgy. However I think that Strauss and Hofmannsthal expected the Viennese audiences to have been aware of the events in Ariadne’s life before the opera begins. Ariadne, having helped Theseus to destroy the Minotaur and escape the labyrinth, was rejected and abandoned by him and when the opera begins we encounter her on the island of Naxos, desolate, heart-broken, and longing for death. You also feel sympathy for her from the lengthy solos which Strauss writes for her in the opera where she sings very profoundly about the emotions of the human heart. This music is in marked contrast to the music sung by her as the character of the superficial soprano in the Vorspiel.

C.U.: The final twenty minutes of the opera is a duet for Ariadne and the newly arrived Bacchus. How do you maintain the dramatic momentum and avoid the duet becoming a vocal competition?

J.C.: I remember being appalled by the prospect of it the first time that I directed it at Glyndebourne. The duet presents the greatest difficulty for every director working on this opera and the challenge is to find a way of directing it so as to avoid making it static and boring. I always decide how I will direct this scene before I work on anything else. Because I am so enamored by the stage as a metaphor in this opera, I believe that the way to keep the duet interesting is to keep the mechanics of the staging interesting. As they sing their fabulous duet we have to move them further and further away from the materiality of their surroundings, from her cave, the island of Naxos, and into the heavens where the transformation of Ariadne and Bacchus is accomplished.