<<  -- 4 --  Roderic Dunnett    A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

Would that Ariadne herself (the splendid-sounding German mezzo Petra Lang, seen last season at the Royal Opera as Tristan and Isolde's Brangane) could move as well as sing : her lament was blissfully doom-laden. Still, stolidity fits the role : her prince, Dionysus-Bacchus, is not yet come (and another, Theseus, has already scarpered). The perkiness of the male 'comics', evenly matched, more than made up; so did the orchestra, peppered in softer moments by Strauss's mutters of clarinet and deft whispers of paired flutes (a foretaste of Berg to come).

The dances -- including a kind of polacca jigged a la Stravinsky -- were wonderful, and Arlecchino's wan 'Jedoch' enchantment itself : like the splendid Scaramuccio, Timothy Robinson, Gunn's Arlecchino -- he has sung it at both Santa Fe and the Met -- revealed a wonderful singer on prime form (though even Gunn was outdone, interestingly, by Aldeburgh's supremely inspired and impossibly young, poised, vivacious and vocally gripping Canadian Jesse Clark, who made the role wholly his own). 'An unfathomable heart beats in both of us' : and to be sure, our hearts were pitter-patter with the antics of these 'verschiedenen Menschen' as the male clowns and Peterson's agreeably quirky Zerbinetta netted Ariadne into their world of forlorn optimism.

The build to Bacchus's arrival is one of Strauss's veritable masterpieces; it proved one of Pappano's too. When the boozing god arrived (the US tenor Robert Brubaker, as magnificent in mainstream romantic repertoire as he is in John Adams) -- lucky girl -- there was no disappointment. And the score is such fun : thereupon everyone goes musically wistful and mushy : the girls move on from Schubertian Strauss to a new medley-parody of Brahms and Mendelssohn, like a kind of Bourgeouis Gentilhomme gone mad. An offstage trumpet joins a virtual onstage Blues : Strauss seems to be parodying not just himself, but everything in sight.

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