Liceu opened its 175th season with Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos, an opera that has rarely been seen at the theatre and which had not been brought on stage for almost 20 years. Written for a moderately sized orchestra and with a transparent yet dense orchestration of refined sonorities, Ariadne is a difficult opera to resolve instrumentally. Maestro Josep Pons, the theatre’s principal director chose to face the challenge of conducting this Ariadne and the obtained results were...

The creation of Ariadne auf Naxos originally led to a novelty in music history. It was the desire to support the work of their friend Max Reinhardt that Richard Strauss and his genius librettist Hugo von Hoffmannsthal brought the intention to combine a play with a lyric opera in one piece. So, they brought together the drama by Jean Baptiste Molière Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, enriched with ballett music and the Greek tragic story of the unhappy love of Ariadne, liberated by the god...