Young director Frederic Wake-Walker made an excellent impression on his debut at Glyndebourne in 2014 with La finta giardiniera. The verdict was confirmed last year in its revival here at La Scala. In the Milanese theatre, however, he had previously aroused some dissent for his staging of Le nozze di Figaro in 2016. Now at the same venue, turning his back to Mozart with Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos, Wake-Walker has tried to confirm the first or these impressions, but sadly, the second one was confirmed instead.
Strauss's work is not the easiest to stage, due to its experimental traits and the absence of a plot: written in 1912 as stage music for Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme by Hofmannsthal and Strauss, the librettist and composer not only mixed prose and music, but also tragic and comic elements, baffling the audiences of the time. Four years later, the music was adapted for a single act (Ariadne abandoned on Naxos) preceded by a prologue in which the spoken part was assigned to the major-domo, here not Monsieur Jourdan's but a rich Viennese aristocrat's butler. Once again, the artifice of "the opera in the opera" was employed, namely the staging of the preparation of a performance where logic and common sense challenge each other: not a comic interlude between the acts of a serious opera, as it was customary in the 18th century, but the challenging exploit of inserting an opera buffa inside an opera seria.
That said, there have been recent productions of Ariadne auf Naxos, which may have been controversial, but where their producers intelligently tackled the intellectual challenge and coped well with the depth of the message – Claus Guth and Katie Mitchell are two examples. But here, Wake-Walker stuck to a vapid pop-parody that demeaned the intellectual message of the work. Together with production designer Jamie Vartan, the director created two distinctly different settings for the two parts of the work. In the prologue he forced Pagliacci into a Rosenkavalier environment: caravans and drink trucks are parked in a grand rococo hall, swarming with Fellinian characters – a clown with a red nose, the tenor as a Roman centurion ready for selfies in front of the Colosseum, glittering top hats and sequins on men's waistcoats. For the actual opera, we are within the walls of the anechoic chamber of a recording studio, bathed in blue light, thus making the wailing of the abandoned Ariadne even more isolated. Here, too, there are plenty of hints to pop culture: Ariadne takes after Montserrat Caballé, meanwhile Zerbinetta has turned from Liza Minnelli into Whitney Houston, the three naiads are backing vocalists in lamé robes, Bacchus is John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, and the four masks are in pastel shades tuxedos. In the background a white staircase rounds off the variety show look – on this “stairway to heaven” Ariadne and Bacchus will ascend in the finale, while the cheap 1980s disco lights develop into the projections of a planetarium.
Conducting the theatre orchestra (almost reduced to chamber size with 11 wind instruments, a few percussions, harmonium, celesta, glockenspiel, harps and strings), Franz Welser-Möst was correct but certainly not compelling, though preserving the transparency of the orchestration. The configuration of the staging, however, made the orchestra overpower the voice of some singers.
Not the voice of Krassimira Stoyanova, prima donna and Ariadne, though, who displayed a most sumptuous expression. It's disappointing that the direction did not succeed in bringing out the character in all its complexity, because of a conventional clichéd approach with a mannered gesticulation. Sabine Devieilhe resumed the role of Zerbinetta and confirmed the agile coloratura and purity of sound production she has shown in the past, but also revealed a certain thinness in the voice that made her almost exhausted at the end of her pyrotechnic performance. Michael König's Bacchus was more heroic than fascinating, while Daniela Sindram was a strained Composer whose voice was sometimes overwhelmed by the instruments in the pit. Markus Werba, Harlequin in the 2006 edition in this same theatre, was an effective Music Master. Thomas Tatzl, Krešimir Špicer, Tobias Kehrer and Pavel Kolgatin were the four masks (Harlequin, Scaramuccio, Truffaldin, Brighella respectively), while Christina Gansch, Anna-Doris Capitelli and Regula Mühlemann were the fascinating cortege of Ariadne. Alexander Pereira, the current superintendent of the Milanese theatre, has played the role of the Butler many times (including in Zurich, London, Dresden and Vienna) and delivered it in his characteristically saucy Viennese accent.
Big cheers for the main protagonists and heavy booing for the director concluded the evening. It was the sixth time that Ariadne auf Naxos was staged at La Scala.
Arianna a Milano, ma il regista non trova il filo
Il giovane regista Frederic Wake-Walker aveva fatto un'ottima impressione al suo debutto a Glyndebourne nel 2014 con la Finta giardiniera, impressione confermata l'anno scorso nella sua ripresa alla Scala. Nel teatro milanese aveva però suscitato più di una perplessità invece per il suo allestimento de Le nozze di Figaro nel 2016. Ora nello stesso teatro, abbandonato Mozart, per l'Ariadne auf Naxos di Strauss, Wake-Walker si gioca la partita nel confermare l'una o l'altra impressione, ma ahimè, conferma la seconda.