Ariadne

Text by Johann Christian Brandes (G)

Theseus is discovered on the island of Naxos by his Athenian companions. He had escaped there with Ariadne, the daughter of the Cretan king, after she had helped him kill the Minotaur. The conflict whether to return to Athens or to stay on the wild, unpopulated island with Ariadne breaks his heart. When Ariadne awakes in the morning, she is on her own. A nymph tells her that Theseus has sailed away. Ariadne realizes her fate to be an atonement for the guilt she has towards her mother and flings herself from a rock into the sea. Apart from a couple of modifications and revisions, Ariadne is based on the wording of the duodrama by Johann Christian Brandes, on which Georg Benda’s setting from 1774 was based. The baroque pathos of the language is counteracted by the unwieldy matter-of-factness of Blacher’s electronic sounds.

Dramatic