ARIADNE AUF NAXOS

About the show

Barrie Kosky relocates the beginning of Ariadne auf Naxos to the Villa Beer - an upper-class Viennese house from around 1900. This is where society meets, where the wealthy bourgeoisie surround themselves with opera and operetta artists - a place where seriousness and entertainment, grand opera and light muse naturally intertwine. For Kosky, the challenge of the piece lies in the constant shift between pathos and lightness. These opposites drive each other on and constantly threaten to lose their balance. If one becomes too heavy, the other tips over. It is precisely this momentum that creates the tension that carries the evening. On the surface, Zerbinetta and her troupe belong to the commedia dell'arte. However, Kosky reveals what lies behind this cipher: the cosmos of operetta with a new generation of emancipated women. Zerbinetta stands for movement, change and the freedom to make new commitments. The idea of remaining faithful to a single man is alien to her. Ariadne, on the other hand, holds on to precisely this idea - and with her to a seriousness that does not relativize pain and loss. There is no simple opposition between the two, but rather a tension between two attitudes towards life and the world. At the end is Bacchus: Dionysus, the god of the theater. For Kosky, he is a figure who does not resolve these opposites, but transforms them. The theater begins where the tragic and the comic drive each other on, sparks fly - and something new emerges.