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Excellent playing from Les Musiciens du Louvre and a mixed vocal performance are matched by a staging by Ivan Alexandre likely to be controversial.

Those who are able would be wise to scare up a ticket for Shicoff’s swansong – it would be a shame to miss an historic performance. 

Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos was first performed in 1912, in a production directed by Max Reinhardt. Unlike the version usually seen today, this first Ariadne was a long-winded play-opera-ballet hybrid, incorporating a full production of Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme with dances to incidental music by Strauss followed by the short opera.