Arianna in Creta

Conductor's Notes

Handel's Arianna in Creta is the first installment in Gotham's multi-year plan to present a number of chamber operas based on chapters in the life of Ariadne. Poor Ariadne: daughter of the demigods King Minos of Crete and Passiphae, perhaps abducted and raised as an Athenian commoner, perhaps sent back to Crete as a slave, sentenced to be chained within the labyrinth as the plaything and meal of the Minotaur (who was the offspring of Passiphae and an albino bull, and therefore her half-brother), saved by her lover Theseus, who whisked her off to Naxos, where she was summarily abandoned and either committed suicide, died of grief, or was saved by Bacchus or Dionysus.

Not surprisingly, composers since the birth of opera have been fascinated by the multifaceted story, but I can think of no better place for Gotham to begin its traversal of musical Ariadnes than with Handel. Because our two most recent productions have been chamber operas of the early 20th Century, I felt that it was time for us to return to the Baroque, and Handel is arguably the greatest Baroque operatic composer of all. Gotham's mission is to present vibrant, intimate productions of small-scale works, from the Baroque era to the present - works that are generally overlooked in traditional opera houses. Arianna in Creta fits our mission to a tee.

Composed in 1733 to challenge the success of Porpora's Arianna in Nasso, which was being presented by a competing London company, Arianna in Creta is the thirty-second opera in Handel's oeuvre, coming after Giulio Cesare, Rodelinda, and Orlando but before Ariodante and Alcina. Though it is one of Handel's finest London operas, it has never before received a staging in the United States. The only reason I can offer for its neglect here is the sheer vocal difficulty of the principal roles. Another milestone is that we are presenting, for the first time anywhere, Handel's original version of the opera, which is shorter and more dramatically concise than the radically revised versions he produced to placate the demands of his star castrato.

Happily, we have departed from authentic Handelian practice by casting a mezzo instead of a castrato, but the singers are accompanied by an orchestra of period instruments. Christopher Alden, who did such an extraordinary job with our debut production of Mozart's Il sogno di Scipione in 2001, has returned to stage Arianna in Creta for us. We hope that this will be an auspicious beginning to our Ariande cycle, not least because this opera ends happily. Not all Ariadne operas do; please stay tuned for future installments by Monteverdi, Milhaud, Martinu, Strauss, and others. In the meantime, thank you for joining us tonight, at the start of our journey. - Neal Goren

Director's Notes

It isn't difficult to explain the unique satisfaction that Handel's operas give to early 21st Century audiences. Daredevil vocal high-wire acts, acute psychological probing, an ironically distanced and sophisticated attitude toward human endeavor - this typically Handelian mix is a recipe enormously appealing to modern tastes. And Arianna in Creta lacks none of these essential ingredients. Co-opting a core tale from Greek mythology and subverting it to a rationalistic 18th Century societal context, it ends up painting a picture as edgily up-to-date as a John Currin portrait. In Handel's opera, the Minotaur story resonates with a dreamy power. In the depths of the Labyrinth of its protagonists' psyches, the beast which waits for them is a potent metaphor for the forces of life which we must all confront and battle against. Handel's version of the story offers a particularly Oedipal slant. The libretto's use of that old dramaturgical cliché, the late-in-the-show revelation of parentage, can almost be excused. For is any other operatic heroine such an absolute avatar of abandonment issues as Princess Ariadne? And her long-lost dad, King Minos, is the ultimate absentee father. Arianna in Creta sings penetratingly of that tortured father/daughter relationship and of all its characters' delicate balancing acts between individual and societal demands. The music is sometimes sympathetically sad, sometimes viciously comic... and always deeply human. - Christopher Alden